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< Back History and stories from Lake Balkhash 15 Jan 2021 Aigerim Kapar Roads From the capital, the way to the city of Balkhash and its lake lies 600 km through the steppes of Central Kazakhstan and the uplands of Sary Arka ([the] Steppe and lakes of Northern Kazakhstan). Whenever I find myself in the Steppe, my imagination always starts to play. Like the hostage of an “epistemological gap”, I try to recall the cultural landscape of a rural space filled with herds of horses and sheep, yurt auls, and Arka songs – which though the home and birthplace of my grandmother, remains unfamiliar to me. Today Central Kazakhstan is an industrial belt, modernized by the colonial administration of the USSR. The pipes and mines of Temirtau, Karaganda, Dzhezkazgan, and Balkhash rise oddly above the steppes to smoke the “sky pastureland” of Tengri (the god of the sky in Turkic mythology). Central Kazakhstan, Temirtau city, photo by Aigerim Kapar An artist, Syrlybek Bekbotayev, and I visited Balkhash via a road known mainly to local residents. Running through the settlement of Aktogay, it lies in connection with the reconstruction of the main highway – intended to connect the new capital with Almaty by a high-speed autobahn, within the framework of the “Nurly Zhol” kazakh state Infrastructure Development Program, associated with the “New Silk Road” initiative of the Chinese government. We crossed the steppe following the course of the Tokyrau River, previously abundant and a significant contributor to the formation of Balkhash Lake in the 8th and 9th centuries. The deltas of the Tokyrau river from the northern coast, and the Ili river which originates in China from the south, meet to form an isthmus along which lie the routes of the ancient Silk Road (which integrated Eastern and Central Kazakhstan in trading systems, and nomadic cultures with the sedentary and agricultural South Kazakhstan). During the 11th-13th centuries, the water in the lake increased as a result of climatic and geological processes. The isthmus flooded and was divided into two parts by the Saryesik peninsula, forming the Uzyn Aral canal where the western half is fresh and shallow and the eastern half is deep and salty. This cut off the South Balkhash region from the North, and consequently disrupted trade routes. [1] Today, socio-economic and infrastructural relations in the region are limited to [the] military training grounds leased by the Russian Federation (8.6 million hectares, for $20 million USD) [2] , including the Sary-Shagan testing ground centered in Priozersk, which until 2010 was a closed military city. In 1928, a route beginning from Karkarly before moving along the Tokyrau stream, was followed by geological prospectors, led by soviet geologist Mikhail Rusakov (who discovered the Konyrat deposit), who later became the first builders of the copper smelter and the city of Balkhash in the 1930s. Taken over two weeks, this journey involving the transportation of construction materials and equipment on camels and horses, led to a strengthening of the Russian Empire. Memories of one of the explorers who made their way to Konyrat, saw a tablet with a message left by their colleagues near the sacred mountain Bektau Ata: “Compatriots! No more water, no grass! Go back! Otherwise, you will disappear with the cattle you have!” [3] This is often cited as evidence of the lifelessness of the territory and the severity of the conditions in which the builders of communism performed their feat. It is not surprising that it is difficult for an uninformed person in the Steppe to find water, especially in a dry, hot summer, since the Northern Balkhash region was a wintering place for the tribes of the Middle Zhuz (the Kazakh tribal system), and in the summer season, they would migrate north to summer pastures. History Lake Balkhash is 35,000 years old. Shaped like a crescent, it is surrounded by the Saryarka, Dzhungarian Alatau, and Tarbagatai ridges. The inner western region stretches to the Betpak-dala desert (named the “hungry steppe” by Russian royal colonial researchers at the end of the 19th century). Balkhash is an endless reservoir, with 80 percent of the water coming from the Ili River, which begins in China (Ili-Kazakh Autonomous Region of Xinjiang). There is a rich history around the lake, always being a place of attraction, as evidenced by archaeological sites, rock paintings, ancient settlements and medieval cities. “Entire medieval urban complex of Northern Tienshan (1-20th AD): settlement location, size and type”, image Renato Sala [4] The first mentions of Balkash Lake were found in Chinese written sources dating back to 126 BC, where it is called “Si Hai” – the Western Sea. It [also] had [a] fixed Dzungarian name: “Balkhash-Nor”, of the nomadic Oirat tribes (who were of Mongolian origin) who lived south of the lake. In the fertile delta of the Ili River, the Dzungars (among other [living] things) were engaged in flood agriculture, mainly growing wheat and building irrigation systems. It wasn’t until the Dzungar Khanate was finally defeated by the Qing Empire in the 18th century, that the Oirats were exterminated and dissolved as a state union. The territory of the Khanate was subsequently divided between the Qing and Russian Empires, and the Kazakh tribes returned to the remainder of the deserted territories. 100 years ago, nomadic and semi-nomadic cattle breeding were the primary and traditional types of farming. The tribes who inhabited these vast territories – of harsh climates and drought-ridden landscapes – moved with herds of animals, developing the only possible type of activity and lifestyle which would continue to take shape over the coming centuries. Alongside adapting to the ecosystem, they also developed their own economy, traditions, culture, and collective memory, shaped by a co-dependency with nature. The history of metallurgical activity in this region also goes back thousands of years. Since the early Bronze Age, Nomadic tribes possessed “primitive” technologies for smelting ore in such a way where the ore – rich in non-ferrous precious metals – would often be laid out on the surface. For several centuries, neighboring nomadic tribes of Kazakhs and Dzungars had disputes over pastures, territories, and resources but they did not carry a purposeful destructive character – contrary to how it may have otherwise been presented in the history of Kazakhstan, which was written during the Soviet period. [5] The demonization of the Kazakh-Dzhungar relations was beneficial to the historians of the Russian Empire and the USSR, justifying the colonization of the Kazakh steppes as protection from the Dzungar raids, calling it a “voluntary annexation” of Kazakhstan to Russia. In our meeting, historian and researcher at the Balkhash Museum of Local History, Daulet Kozhakhmetov, said: “we are indebted to the Dzungarian people, that at the cost of their lives, a buffer was created against Chinese aggression.” Modernization The Soviet policies for the development and modernization of the steppe and desert expanses of Central Asia were based on an intensive exploitation of natural and human resources; and a disregard for Indigenous traditions and ways of life, the environment, and ecology, all the while armed with the slogan: “man will conquer nature!”. The dark side of this modernity was quick to appear to the Kazakh people. The 1920-30s, characterised as a period of forced sedentarization, dispossession and resettlement of nomads, resulted in the creation of an artificial famine: “Asharshylyk”. It was also a period of time marked by a genocide in which almost 40% of the population died, and more than 1 million people migrated through China to Iran and Afghanistan. More than 12, 000 people left their native lands in the Balkhash region. As a result, the livestock population in the Ili-Balkhash basin reduced by 75%-100% – a dire situation for nomadic life where animal breeding was a critical source of support. Unused pastures degraded, which contributed to the desertification of a third of the territory in the Ili-Balkhash basin, and the continued disruption of its ecosystem. [6] Workers from all over the USSR were resettled in Kazakhstan to places of Indigenous people for the implementation of great economic plans (of five-year projects) – but as well as this, some of them were also deported and exiled to the camps of the Gulag system (Karlag, Balkhashlag, Steplag, etc.). Repressive colonial policies, irrational management, and misuse of natural resources led to both human and environmental tragedies. The Aral sea was drained over several decades, the river system was disrupted by anthropogenic interference, and the water was depleted for the irrigation of moisture-loving crops (namely cotton and rice, which are not suitable for cultivation in the arid climate of the steppe landscape of Central Asia). After 30 years of independence, governmental powers and economic systems have not yet been rebuilt. Kazakhstan continues to bear the burden of its raw material base, having its success measured against the formerly implemented five-year plans [of] exploiting the subsoil and insisting on forgetting pre-industrial period and culture. Syrlybek Bekbotayev, “Five-Year Plan”, 2019“Re-membering. Dialogues of Memories” Exhibition in memory of victims of political repression, curated by Aigerim Kapar. TSE art Destination, Astana, 2019. Photo by Zhanarbek Amankulov Balkhash Lake Along the shores of a picturesque lake, lit with glittering emerald water, the smoking chimneys of the Balkhash Mining and Metallurgy Plant create a surreal scene and evoke a sense of unease that such a unique corner of paradise continues to be extensively exploited and polluted. During the Soviet period, economic and industrial development, and the use of natural resources in the region, were carried out without considering the ecological capacity of the basin’s ecosystem. This was aggravated by the construction of artificial reservoirs and the Kapchagai hydroelectric power station built on the Ili River in 1967, which has been filling the basin for over 20 years. According to the resolution of the International Forum Balkhash held in Almaty in 2000, the situation of the Ili-Balkhash basin was recognized as critical due to the unstable water levels – a key indicator of the basin’s ecosystem. [7] As a result of the II International Forum “Balkhash-2005”, [an] Alakol Basin Inspection was established to regulate the use and protection of water resources. Lake Balkhash, photo by Aigerim Kapar Today, Lake Balkhash remains devoid of state care or any global environmental programs to save its ecosystem, and the lake and basin are left in a state of ecological and socio-economic disaster. A quiet tragedy, unfortunately, does not arouse attentive interest nor the adoption of effective measures that may prevent a repetition of the tragedy of the Aral Sea. Modern industrial, infrastructural, and economic programs – in particular, the program of OBOR and Nurly Zhol – (just like during the socialist regime of the USSR) don’t take into account the ecological burden on the environment in the region. These programs don’t consider resolving issues of transboundary rivers, water security, or access to water for local communities as a guarantee of sustainable development for the region or the success of the implementation of long-term plans and cooperation. According to the McKinsey expert group, by 2045 Lake Balkhash may lose up to 86% of its water. [8] The threat of an environmental catastrophe is mainly attributed to the growth of economic affairs, climate change (resulting in the melting of glaciers), and industrial pollution. In the columbine area of the Ili River basin, China is cultivated by [the] irrigation of 1 million hectares of cotton. Water reservoirs have been built and hydroelectric power plants are operating, and an increase in water intake by 10-15% threatens to lower the water level in the lake to a critical condition. Within the region that lies in Kazakhstan, more than 90% of water resources are used for irrigated agriculture, mainly for growing rice and cotton, continuing the USSR’s methods of extensive production and capitalisation without any considerations to the land and the environment. Of these exploited water resources, 60-70% of which is inefficiently used and seeps into the sands through outdated irrigation systems. The main industrial environmental pollutant in the region is the Balkhash copper smelter, built on the lake shore in 1938, 10 kilometers from the Konyrat mine, which became the backbone enterprise of the Balkhash city. Checkpoint of the Balkhash copper smelter. Banner caption: “Let’s build the future together!” Photo by Syrlybek Bekbotayev Today it belongs to the Kazakhmys Smelting Corporation. According to official data for 2018, the harmful emissions into the atmosphere amounted to 72,899 tons – for which the company pays to the state budget of 3,083,699 KZT per year. [9] In settling on the surface of the lake, toxic substances penetrate the water. The indicators of heavy metals in the water grow each year and exceed permissible standards, negatively affecting the biodiversity of flora and fauna. Anthropogenic interference has also affected the species composition of the lake’s fish, where endemic species lie on the verge of extinction, and fisheries are in crisis. We met with researchers from the Committee of the Research and Production Center for Fisheries in Balkhash, who monitor the rational use and reproduction of fish stocks, and issue annual forecasts of fish catch volumes. The committee is also looking for new opportunities for the preservation and development of fisheries, but their activities are limited by financial and other resources. Gas emissions of the city-forming enterprise are a great sore spot and the most difficult problem for the townspeople, city administration and the plant – a situation which has not been resolved for several decades. [However], Rymkul Belyalovna, a local ecologist who has worked for many years in the department for the protection of natural resources, spoke of a (far from perfect) system for assessing material damage and paying compensation for atmospheric emissions to the residents, in the case of complaints. Pipes of a copper smelter and thermal power plant, Balkhash city. Photo by Syrlybek Bekbotayev. In September, plant workers posted a video on social media showing faulty pipe filters which elicited a great public resonance. The plant was only fined 1,000,000 tenge – by comparison, a beauty salon that violated quarantine work restrictions was fined 600,000 tenge. [10] In news from Balkhash – which also currently holds the status of being the most polluted city in Kazakhstan – plans of the local authorities to develop the tourist potential of the lake, without eliminating the source of pollution, are seen as difficult to implement. Alongside this, the Ministry of Ecology launched a project for a roadmap of environmental problems in the Karaganda region this year, which plans to reduce emissions of harmful substances and modernize mining enterprises in the region. “This is my city, my combine, my factory” We received a dedication to the gas of a copper smelter upon [our] arrival late in the evening. On that day, the wind blowing from the direction of the plant was especially felt in the air. Aizat, our hospitable guide through the city and its senses, and a student of the Kazakh language and literature, says that her mother is kidding: “nevertheless this gas kills all harmful germs in the body”. Bertys bay, view of the city of Balkhash. Photo by Syrlybek Bekbotayev. Geologist Mikhail Rusakov received an award for the discovery of “blue hill” [11] a trip to the USA to study new technologies in the mining industry. Upon arrival, he was sentenced to 25 years in a prison camp under espionage charges. After 5 years he was rehabilitated and returned to Balkhash, where he discovered several more deposits. The town of Balkhash grew out of the workers’ village in Bertys Bay (as One tooth), fuelling the industrial development of the Konyrat mine since 1930. The mine was developed by the labor of workers from all over the USSR. The city was built by the forces of prisoners of camps and Japanese prisoners of war. The policy of the Soviets forced the nomads, who were left without resources to sustain their own livelihoods, to be hired in industrial enterprises. My grandfather’s family from the Madeniet (Culture) auyl of Northern Kazakhstan were forced to work through severe hunger while working at the factories of Magnitogorsk. Palace of Culture of Metallurgists named after Magaui Khamzin on Lenin Street. Photo by Syrlybek Bekbotayev. After 90 years, mining at Konyrat has finally stopped. The “blue hill” disappeared and became a gaping crater – a model of which can be viewed in the local history museum of Balkhash, where in its halls of exposition, the entire history of Kazakhstan is presented in an attempt to revise itself from a decolonial position – though this position barely touches the history of the factory or the construction of the city. Model of the Konyrat mine, Balkhash Local History Museum. Photo by Aigerim Kapar Soviet propaganda and its methods have been minimally criticized or rethought, and so continue to manifest themselves on the city streets and public spaces. It is not enough to replace monuments on pedestals and rename streets to create a “new” history and future. Monument to Agybai batyr (1802-1885), Independence Square. Photo by Syrlybek Bekbotayev In his book “The Pride of Balkhash” (2010), historian and factory veteran, Sovet Kaukerbekuly, denotes his belonging to the place with the words: “This is my city, my factory, my combine”, effectively omitting the lake and its importance in the context of the city. Rather, the stories, hopes, and destinies of the people who built the “bright future” are what is woven around the plant. Today Lake Balkhash remains “invisible”. Its physical scale is not proportionate with the space occupied in the minds of people, the cultural landscape, public agenda, or the policy of the authorities, despite its value for the entire ecosystem of the region, the country, not to mention, the planet. Sadly nothing alarmingly new, this sentiment is a general reflection of the alienation of man from nature in the Anthropocene epoch, and his attitude and interaction with the environment. Aigerim Kapar, Almaty 2020 Aigerim Kapar is an independent curator, cultural activist, founder of the creative communication platform «Artcom» . [1] Stasiv Igor, “On the origin of Lake Balkhash and the Balkhash-Alakol depression”, 2018 http://sci-article.ru/stat.php?i=1523036452 [2] Dinara Kuatova, “8.6 million hectares of land leases for military training grounds Kazakhstan”, 2019 https://inbusiness.kz/ru/news/8-6-mln-ga-zemli-sdaet-v-arendu-pod-voennye-poligony-kazahstan [3] Sovet Kaukerbekuly, “The Pride of the Balkhash”, Karaganda, 2010, p. 38 [4] Renato Sala “The medieval urbanization of Semirechye”, 2010 https://www.chikyu.ac.jp/ilipro/page/18-publication/workshop-book/workshop-book_individual%20files/2-1_Aubekerov.pdf [5] Radik Temirgaliev “Dzungars in the history of Kazakhstan”, 2007 https://zonakz.net/2007/03/26/джунгары-в-истории-казахстана/ [6] Zhuldyzbek Abylkhozhin, “Study of the ecology of the Ili-Balkhash Region in the Soviet Period”, 2010 [7] The International Ecological Forum “Balkhash-2000”, http://kazneb.kz/bookView/view/?brId=1169574 [8] Dr. Bulat K. Yessekin,“Ecosystem management in Balkhash Lake basin as a model of SDG localization in Kazakhstan and Central Asia region, 2020 https://www.es-partnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Ecosystem-approach-in-Balkhash-Lake-basin-Kazakhstan-China-002.pdf [9] Unified ecological resource of the Ministry of Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources, Kazakhmys Smelting LLP Balkhash Copper Smelter, 2018 http://prtr.ecogosfond.kz/2019/12/04/too-kazakhmys-smelting-balhashskij-medeplavilnyj-zavod/ [10] Balkhash Copper Smelter was fined one million tenge https://24.kz/ru/news/social/item/426189-balkhashskij-medeplavilnyj-zavod-oshtrafovali-na-million-tenge [11] Sovet Kaukerbekuly, “The Pride of the Balkhash”, Karaganda, 2010, p. 40 Previous Next

Events Lecture Series Participant Activities The WCSCD 2019 Salary Spreadsheet: Expanding the Conversation Around Salaries in the Arts Earlier this year, a spreadsheet originating in the USA was circulated within the international arts community detailing the salaries of various roles at museums, galleries and other arts institutions, and with a request for arts workers to add anonymous details of their own salaries to the spreadsheet. At the time of writing, that spreadsheet now contains over 3200 entries, the majority of which are from the USA, but also other countries such as Canada, the UK, Germany, Switzerland and Mexico. The accuracy of the data is unclear as contributors are anonymous and are encouraged to share as much or as little as they are comfortable with the purpose of the spreadsheet, titled Arts + All Museums Salary Transparency 2019 , is to bring an unprecedented level of transparency to the arts in terms of pay and to open up a dialogue between arts workers, with the hope of bringing about positive change in what is, traditionally, a relatively low-paid industry. At WCSCD 2019 we saw the importance of such a dialogue and discussed salaries with many of the curators and arts workers we met during the program, ultimately creating our own anonymous salary spreadsheet. The WCSCD 2019 Salary Spreadsheet includes salary information for a number of countries not currently found in the original spreadsheet or only mentioned a very small number of times, such as Serbia, Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Slovenia. It also includes information about general average and minimum salaries in each of the countries listed in order to illustrate how the salaries of arts workers compare to general salaries. In what is unlikely to come as a surprise to those who work in the arts, the WCSCD 2019 Salary Spreadsheet suggests that arts salaries often fail to reach average salaries and, in a number of countries, struggle to even meet recognised minimum standards. Discussions about salaries during the WCSCD program also uncovered other issues, including the lack of written agreements between funders and curators regarding curatorial fees, non-payment of agreed curatorial fees, and changes being made to the funding of projects without notifying curators in advance. The more that discussions around salaries and working conditions become the norm, the better it will be for arts workers. As Michelle Millar Fisher, an assistant curator in the European decorative arts and design department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and one of the people who started the original spreadsheet, said: “If you don’t do it, everything stays the same. Sometimes it takes just one tiny action. Solidarity is the only way to affect great change.” text by Shasta Stevic WCSCD 2019 Salary Spreadsheet

Past Programs 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2022 Program Archive Open call: What Could Should Curating Do educational program 2022 February 13, 2022

Pedagogies of Transition MARCH 2 I 2023 Join us for an online discussion series with Dr Frances C. Koya Vaka’uta, Larys Frogier, Elvira Espejo Ayca, Manuela Moscoso, Zena Cumpston and Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. The series is initiated by Biljana Ciric, Madeleine Collie and Susie Quillinan (Study Pattern Collective) and co-facilitated by: Deniz Kırkalı, Ka Yuet Lau and Iris Long and organised by Monash University and Goldsmiths, University of London . March to April 2023 For so long, we have been implicated in ongoing systemic and institutional crises. We understand these crises as political, economical, epistemological and ecological. As cultural workers we recognize a need to move towards structural change. In this series of gatherings we will share possibilities for epistemic shifts—some speculative, others involving very practical and concrete steps—towards undoing institutional working rituals. We share these conversations as a process of continuously composting knowledge that will contribute to our collective struggle. In these public moments we have invited people who have had an intimate impact on us and our way of thinking and doing, and in whose work we glimpse possibilities for breathing, imagining and instituting otherwise. We are a study group of three cultural workers, curators and artists—Biljana Ciric (What Could Should Curating Do), Madeleine Collie (initator of Food Art Research Network) and Susie Quillinan (Hawapi)—who are currently all undertaking a PhD in Curatorial Practice at Monash University, and who share an interest in imagining and practising different modes of instituting within the arts. Since 2021 our gatherings have been composed of invisible and visible encounters as a need to learn with each other, and also from peers in intersecting fields who share the same concerns. What are the ‘pedagogies of transition’ (Rolando Vazquez, 2021) towards different modes of instituting? For us, instituting is closely connected to the curatorial, which we understand as a gesture of caring with others that can collectively lead us to more sustainable working methodologies. I. Discussion Oceanic visions – 29 March Larys Frogier – Artist at Ocean & Wavz with Alfie Chua, researcher, advisory member and previous director of the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai. Dr Frances C. Koya Vaka’uta Team Leader, Culture for Development, Pacific Community (SPC) · UK (Goldsmiths) – 9am (BST) · Melbourne (MADA) – 7pm (AEDT) · Lima – 3am (PET) · Paris – 10am (CEST) · Fiji – 8pm (FJT) II. Discussion – Crianza Mutua12 April Elvira Espejo Ayca – director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz Manuela Moscoso – CARA Director, New York · La Paz -8.30am (BOT) · NYC – 8.30am (EDT) · UK (Goldsmiths) – 1.30pm (BST) · Melbourne (MADA) – 10.30pm (AEST) · Lima – 7.30am (PET) III. Discussion Metabolisms – 26 April Zena Cumpston – Curator Emu Sky and CoAuthor of Plants: Past Present and Future Vanessa Machado de Oliveira – Professor and author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity’s wrongs and implications for social activism · Melbourne (MADA) – 10am (AEST) · UK (Goldsmiths) – 1am (BST) · Vancouver – 5pm (PDT 25 April) · Lima – 7pm (PET 25 April) Note that the first event is in Melbourne (AEDT) time and the second and third dates are in Melbourne (AEST) time. There is also an issue with EventBrite’s “save to calendar” function. Please ensure that you have noted the correct time of this event

< Back Seeing the Invisible: Documenting and Interpreting China’s Cultural Presence in Uzbekistan (Part 2) 22 Nov 2020 Alexey Ulko Setting himself the task of “researching ‘the politics and aesthetics of the visual representation of China-Uzbek relations’…” Alex Ulko continues to reflect on the “complexity and contradictions” permeating the relationship between China and countries within Central Asia. This follows from Part 1 as another collection of photographs, thoughts and observations – his ongoing inquiry which seeks to piece together a “disjointed and fragmented” picture of the lines running from China through and around Uzbekistan. B Peter Frankopan writes in his excellent, but somewhat sketchy, book The New Silk Roads (2018): “talking about improving connections is one thing; funding them is quite another.” It is a fair point to make as many previous ideas foreseeing the Great Silk Road’s revival, in one way or another, were based mostly on wishful thinking rather than on pragmatic strategies. My major experience dealing with one of such concepts was obtained while working for the International Institute for Central Asian Studies, established in Samarkand in 1995 as a result of UNESCO’s Silk Roads Project: Integral Studies of the Silk Roads, the Roads of Dialogue 1988-1997 . Described by Federico Mayor, the UNESCO Director-General at the time, as “a bold and ambitious venture set to reopen doors to the past thus shedding new light on the present”, the project was very much a product of its time. As the Cold War drew to a close and the Berlin Wall came down, many Central Asian scholars and politicians alike embraced a romantic, meta-modernist vision of the region’s future reunited with its glorious past. The Great Silk Road was seen as an essentialist template that had united people from China to Europe once, and so could be made to work again – of course, in a new geopolitical context. It promised to put Central Asia back to where it once apparently belonged: in the very centre of the intercontinental dialogue. The leaders of Uzbekistan were particularly keen to play the key role in this process. If Central Asia was the heart and soul of the world and the Great Silk Road its backbone, then Uzbekistan was its heart. Samarkand was, of course, the iconic Silk Road city and it made perfect sense to make it the home of a new institution that would symbolise the new-found zest for transcultural and transboundary cooperation in the region. IICAS Member States (from the internet) The IICAS was founded by ten member states with a mission to bring Central Asian historical and cultural issues to the international community’s attention. It was supposed to become an international academic hub, strengthening collaboration between local scholars and their foreign colleagues through a multidisciplinary study of the region. However, the vision of a prosperous, transparent and dynamic Central Asia never quite materialised. Central Asian states could never find a solid common background, and for over twenty years Uzbekistan mounted itself on a perch of political self-isolation, quarrelling with all its neighbours and being very much part of the problem, not the solution. Although the Silk Roads’ dream still continues, its implementation now almost entirely depends on China and Chinese capital as there are few volunteers who are ready to invest in the region. Even China can be quite choosy. It stopped paying its agreed fee to support the IICAS after several short years without any explanation. Ostensibly, this duty was transferred to a poorer government academic body. Most likely, the Chinese authorities simply felt that an open multicultural institution supporting a range of international projects along the Great Silk Road did not quite meet the objectives of the Chinese cultural and political strategy within the region. *** The Damansky Island Battle (Alex Ulko) Lei Feng, the Chinese national hero by Shen Jingdong (from the internet) One of my first conscious memories of China was the Chinese military threat. Of course, in the Soviet days no reliable information about it was available, but the public awareness of the Damansky Island conflict was there – albeit very vague and almost entirely based on rumours. The boys in class shared “confidential” information about eighteen infantry lines, rolling in waves on our defensive positions and being wiped out one by one by our secret weapon. Some said it was laser guns, others suggested generators of infrared rays were involved, but nobody could say which year it was. It seemed very recent at the time, but only much later did I learn that the armed conflict had taken place just a couple of days after I was born, in March 1969. The small Damansky Island in the Ussuri River was finally yielded to China in 1991 and is now known as Zhenbao Island (珍寶島). The commander of the Russian forces killed in action was a colonel Leonov, with an unusual first name: Demokrat. We know little about him, apart from the fact that he was born to a border guard officer in Baku in 1926, when the world Communist revolution still seemed so near. *** HUAWEI advert on the road from the Tashkent airport (Alex Ulko) In the first weeks of autumn 2020, as the heat of summer gave way to cooler weather, European states further restricted Huawei’s role in the construction of their communication networks. More and more countries became convinced that the Chinese company was a security threat. Their mainstream media outlets frequently mentioned that Chinese citizens were required by law to help their country gather intelligence where they could, and the US urged the EU to ban Chinese technology from its future communication networks. Keith Krach, the US Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs said that “there is really no future with Huawei.” While the UK has already officially banned Huawei, it looks like Germany will probably suffocate the company’s operations with bureaucracy. The result will be the same, say European experts, but apparently not in Uzbekistan. The first thing visitors see on their way from the Tashkent International Airport to the city centre is a huge HUAWEI logo. It has replaced the old Soviet neon slogan “Tashkent is the City of Peace and Friendship”. A telling development, indeed. *** Wang Tong hotel in Tashkent (Alex Ulko) Uzbeks and the Chinese tend to see the world as two distinct groups of people: their own family, relatives, neighbours and friends (their circle of relationships) on one side of an imaginary fence, with everybody else on the other. These cultures identify a much stronger distinction between Us and Them than most European cultures. There are several important distinctions, as far as I can see. Firstly, although Uzbeks make up the majority in Uzbekistan, they are continuously exposed to other cultures, e.g. Russian, as they live along with representatives of these cultures (especially in cities). Uzbek culture is a classical hybrid, while the Chinese one seems much more defined. Many Uzbeks speak some other languages – Russian, Tajik, Kazakh or even English, and when they travel to a neighbouring country or to Russia, they do not feel intensely culturally isolated. In other words, they are quite used to being the colonial Other in Russia, and feel comfortable with guests, visitors or local non-Uzbeks in Uzbekistan. On the contrary, the Chinese are perceived by many other nations as a huge homogenous group and in many ways, they behave like this. Outside of China, their “In” group becomes abruptly and threateningly small, and it is ethnically determined. Both cultures, Chinese and Uzbek, are particularist. In other words, they value relationships more than the rules, and focus on the exceptional nature of present circumstances. Interestingly, the research conducted by Fons Trompenaars suggests that Russian culture is also particularist, even more so than Chinese (see Riding the Waves of Culture , 1993). This, of course, is relative. Many people in Uzbekistan lament that the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent independence brought about more corruption and deregulated chaos than what was thought permissible during the Soviet rule. Although this anecdotal evidence proves nothing, it at least tells us something about the perception of the Soviet, Russia-dominated culture vs. Uzbek which is seen by many as much more relationship-driven. It would also be interesting to see what will happen if, in the future, Chinese culture eventually replaces Russian in Central Asia. *** “Today, if people in Eurasia were all fans of Chinese pop music or television dramas, or had a more positive image of China, it might be easier for their governments to partner with Beijing on “win-win” initiatives like the BRI,” wrote a Chinese journalist George Gao (not to be confused with George Fu Gao, a prominent virologist and immunologist). Nikita Makarenko, one of the top Russian-language bloggers in Uzbekistan, rejected the very possibility of this on his Facebook page, saying “China can become as economically strong as it wants. But it will never seriously control the minds and hearts of people on the planet.” In his opinion, China does not produce an attractive and sought-after modern culture and as the result, nobody outside the country really listens to modern Chinese music or watches Chinese cinema. “You go to watch Nolan’s films and listen to Lady Gaga,” says Makarenko. Left: Cheap Chinese everyday products (Umida Akhmedova)Right: Chinese wholesale shop (Elina Klimova) This may sound like another bout of Sinophobia based on racial prejudice but the popularity of the more distant and even more esoteric Japanese popular culture – from karate to manga, Kurosawa to yakitori suggests otherwise. One of the commentators noticed, “Japanese people are far more likely to respect my privacy and not try to strike up a random conversation with me. I often find that it’s difficult to just be left alone in China, which is annoying.” However, talking to several Uzbeks now living in China, I have heard some praises of its social culture. Some Uzbeks commented that the Chinese are quite good at creating an atmosphere of informal camaraderie between people, and that they can be outspoken and direct in discussion. One Uzbek girl who had spent several years teaching English in a Chinese school said, “Chinese girls have more opportunities than ever before in education and work, and they always seem to have goals and ambitions of their own, not like back home.” The quarantine in China (Zarina Anvar) Yet Makarenko remained unconvinced. “No one in the world wants to be like [the] Chinese. No one in their right mind wears a Beijing logo on their cap and dreams of emigrating to the fabulous Guangzhou.” His conclusion is simple. “In an authoritarian state, the production of a topical and globally modern cultural product is simply impossible. A lily will not grow in the desert, only a cactus and a thorn.” Tell that to Ai Weiwei, I thought. Or Yuk Hui. *** Thinking further about the BRI and the relations between China and Uzbekistan, I remembered Vanessa Page writing about China, “it is home to rampant corruption. The national government is actively trying to stamp it out in an effort to make the country more business-friendly for westerners and to avoid the economic and business inefficiencies that come from corruption.” Uzbekistan is facing very similar problems and if there has been a name evoked every time corruption in the country is mentioned, it is Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of independent Singapore. His popularity with Uzbek neoliberals is explained by his image of “a man with an iron hand,” leading his country to prosperity in an Asian, rather than a democratic European, fashion. Here, a top-down Soviet approach gets mixed with patriarchal power patterns attributed to Asia. Some influencers seriously suggest that Uzbekistan should adopt “a Singaporean model” unconcerned by the huge geopolitical difference between one of the world’s busiest cargo ports and a double landlocked country in “the lost heart of Asia,” as Colin Thubron had it. Chinese and Uzbek flags (Umida Akhmedova) Guanxi (benefits gained from social connections) (Alex Ulko) Corruption is not the only problem that China shares with Uzbekistan. There are obvious cracks in both countries’ economies. There is the problem of underemployment and inflation. Government spending is a key driver of growth in China and in Uzbekistan, and it has led to indiscriminate construction in the recent years. China has struggled to find buyers for properties in its ghost cities. Some large-scale city development projects in Uzbekistan have already stalled. The vision of urbanism that has become the trademark of Chinese “progress” (whatever that means in real terms) has turned into a form of cargo cult in Uzbekistan – an imitation without any clear objective. Commenting on the poor quality of the newly built high-rise building in the centre of Tashkent, some people say, “at least these won’t stay here long.” What a consolation! *** The famous Russian rock musician, Boris Grebenshchikov, a renowned connoisseur of Taoism, wrote the following joke and shared it on Facebook: “One day Lao Tzu was driving a black buffalo and violated the traffic rules. A traffic cop approached him and asked to see his driving license. Lao Tzu said: – When water flows down, it does nothing, because flowing down is its natural property. Such are the properties of a true person: they do not improve, but things follow them. The sky itself is high. The earth itself is solid. The Moon and the Sun are light in themselves. What can they improve? How can a person riding a buffalo have a license? The cop did not know whether to laugh or to cry.” Chinese traffic police signs (from the internet) In 2007, Chinese city traffic police officers had an average life expectancy of 43 years. Nearly every traffic police officer in large cities had respiratory infections caused by polluted air. Stress, traffic noise and the time they had to stand in the sun also exacerbated their grave health conditions. I do not know if their life has become better over the last 13 years, but I am sure that even without the COVID-19 pandemic, it remains rather grim. Things do not change that fast. *** An important characteristic of the BRI framework has been noticed by Roman Vakulchuk and Indra Overland, who saw that the Chinese strategists had decided to tackle the internal lack of cohesion within the Central Asian region by using a bilateral approach in China’s relations with Central Asian governments in the 21st century. They write: “The Chinese have acted patiently and pragmatically, and over time have managed to build working relations with each of the five countries, including Turkmenistan, where the construction of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline can be viewed as a major Chinese success story in a country where both Russia and the United States have struggled to maintain a foothold.” However, these bilateral relations can be described as skewed, at best. A substantial part of the Chinese investments into Central Asia forever remains within the Chinese infrastructure as a loan given by a Chinese bank to a local government, or when project is used to pay the Chinese company that had been contracted to execute the project. The company, of course, uses Chinese equipment and Chinese workers to do almost all the work. The most spectacular illustrations of this are the roads built in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as well as the Kamchik Railway Tunnel in Uzbekistan linking the Ferghana Valley with the rest of the country across the mountains. Chinese construction equipment (Elina Klimova) Despite the fact that BRI is a huge regional project, it is obvious that in the short and medium term, the collaboration between China and Central Asian states will be based primarily on bilateral relations. That was what happened in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and in a different form, is now happening in Uzbekistan. In summer 2020, I had to open my Visa card with an Uzbek bank and tellingly chose the one called the Ipak Yuli Bank (the Silk Road Bank). I was quite surprised to receive a free UnionPay card as a bonus. Interested, I went online to check the benefits and potential issues with the card and found the following review: “After the annexation of the Crimea, the United States and other Western countries imposed sanctions on Russia, which has led to disruptions in service to holders of Visa and MasterCard cards issued by some Russian banks. Chinese UnionPay cards, which on the one hand have become common throughout the world, on the other hand, cannot have their use limited by US authorities. So for those who have suffered from the sanctions or are afraid of such a prospect, the CUP cards are the most suitable.” If there is a book that can comprehensively explain the attractiveness of such exciting options to Central Asians, it’s not going to be Frankopan’s New Silk Roads, but rather Dictators without Borders by Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw. a screenshot of a section dedicated to Uzbek-China relations from Podrobno.uz (from the internet) Meanwhile in Uzbekistan, the once invisible Chinese presence is becoming more and more articulate. A popular web news outlet podrobno.uz/ has a special section dedicated solely to the relations between Uzbekistan and China, aptly called: Keys to the Future . The section contains what is known as “sponsored content” with texts redolent of the long forgotten Soviet style – unashamedly banal and bombastic at the same time. One article describing a cultural festival organised by the Chinese company CNODC, informs its readers that “the Chinese people call on the peoples of the whole world to jointly create a global community of shared destiny. And many countries have already extended their hands of friendship and cooperation in return. We must act together, share our cultures and knowledge, have common good goals and move forward, creating a bright and wonderful future for our descendants. After all, we are all children of the same planet.” Aren’t we just? Atlas gown, two books and two chopsticks (Alex Ulko) Alexey Ulko , born in Samarkand (Uzbekistan) in 1969. Previous Next

< Back On Not Hearing the Gunfire 20 Aug 2020 Su Wei In the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic, January of this year marked the beginning of social distancing which was to last for months. During these months, China’s cities, towns, and villages were subjected to a strict system of control initiated and implemented by its bureaucratic institution. This system monitored citizens’ life and activities on social media, with the help of so-called grid management, big data, and a large number of officials “sinking” into the local community. This approach, on top of the voluntary self-surveillance of the public, did help to effectively stem the spread of the virus. Nonetheless, at the same time, inter-personal relations built upon local neighborhoods and communities—which had already been tenuous and fast-disappearing—were destroyed in the process. The virus has confined people to their homes. In metropolises such as Beijing, such a singular state of affairs has turned the pandemic into an “information war”, as people are wrapped up in a world constructed by mobile phone screens. WeChat , a social media platform recently sanctioned by the U.S. government and long monitored by the Chinese government, has become the main channel for people to learn about the outside world and to express their complex emotions surrounding the pandemic. Because the platform itself can be both official (almost all official media has public WeChat blogs) and private, all the while being censored, public and private life become very closely intertwined in a bizarre and unsettling way. Covid-19 Nucleic Acid Detection in a University campus, photo credit: Su Wei This situation continues today, even while the pandemic has been declared to be completely under control in China. It is a moment in time when the world in your phone and your everyday life have truly collapsed into one another. Not only do you have to produce your “health certificate” on your phone whenever you go into a public place, but you also have to make conscious—even strenuous—efforts to discern valuable ideas and judgements from the more perilous ones when confronting messages and discussions on your phone from different friends and fields. Such discernment can be very difficult, even sometimes, schizophrenic. At the end of January, and almost at the same time the outbreak of the epidemic hit its peak, I officially resigned from my job as a senior curator at an art museum in Beijing, in the hopes of rediscovering the fields beyond the staged scenes of power struggle. For a long time, I couldn’t leave my mobile phone either, although I knew how one-sided and biased the observations through it can be, and how expressions made through it could not avoid being performative, let alone being mostly improvisational and opportunistic by nature. The art world has been squirming in pain after Chinese New Year. This pain first came from the capital world as well as the art market, and the online fair of Art Basel, Hong Kong matched this mood. The art world then brimmed over with discussions under the aegis of “art and pandemic”, with all kinds of undigested online creations and lecture series, each proposing new ways of thinking about our current context. To be fair, the art community has always shown a spirit of dissatisfaction with the status quo, albeit a spirit that is also sometimes rare, and has been consistently on the wane since the year 2000. Nevertheless, some of the recent creations and opinions continue to deeply reveal our misconceptions about contemporaneity, as well as how untenable this fragile, short-lived sense of the contemporary actually is. In other words, our sense of the contemporary cannot stand even the slightest interrogation, be it humanistic or that about the actual logic behind knowledge production. What really gave me a strong sense of crisis was the outbreak of the BLM campaign. It spread across Chinese social networks at a lesser speed and with weaker intensity than the civil protest movements did several years ago, including the Wall Street movement, Hong Kong’s Occupy Central and the yellow umbrella movements. To explain our lukewarm reaction to the campaign, we need more than the simple fact that local social media platforms, such as WeChat, have not played an important role in China’s social life for very long. Not sufficient, either, is the fact that Facebook and Twitter have been banned for a while. Rather, the steep decrease in the communication effect of the BLM campaign reflects a change in people’s mentality. The Chinese cultural scene caught in various discourses of state, individuals, nation, imperialism, market, freedom, etc. is inevitably falling apart, and the once shared feeling for the oppressed has been substituted by that of defending national interests. In China, people have long regarded the race issue as a product of the United States, ignoring its pervasive presence among themselves. Moreover, debates about justice and equality have faded into the background, along with those between the New Left and liberals back in the 1990s – those debates have now rendered themselves footnotes to nationalist contentions where racial issues are concerned. The racist “scenes” and “misunderstandings” we all experience abroad are often reduced—in an alienating way—to “common knowledge,” and are often dismissed as irrelevant, as if they “only happen to other people.” It so seems that the issue of race is much less important than that of class, which apparently concerns more Chinese people. The value of such names as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and George Floyd invariably seem to be of secondary importance here. Hong Kong during the Umbrella Movement, 2014, photo credit: Su Wei As the confrontation between China and The United States—which began last year—has recently been radically escalating, a division between the left and the right is gradually revealing itself in the cultural sphere. Such a schism, however, was otherwise disappearing in the context of the neoliberal economy. The professedly more critical left constantly draw upon the historical legacy of the “first thirty years“ (1949-1979) in their interpretations of today, whereas the liberals are having difficulty negotiating a space amidst the ideological struggle between China and the Western world. Both sides are engaged in a tightrope-walking practice, the dangers of which, however, are again obvious: one either skids to the nationalist left or hits the nihilist right. Meanwhile, at the public level, nationalism has reached its zenith with government support, while the recent military confrontation between China and the United States only further aggravates the situation. What is emerging in the cultural and public spheres imposes a strain on China’s art world. Admittedly, art inevitably exists in the world, but what better describes the situation is that the art community in China have been passively mobilized at this time – their motivation and self-awareness subsequently still subject to scrutiny. The nationalism and nihilism of the country as a whole have penetrated the art world on all fronts. Despite the fact that the Chinese art community does not often reveal their political stances—not an entirely conscious choice, though, since such practices can also be gestures of withdrawal—a certain collective unconscious is indeed being fashioned by the radical changes in the cultural and social realms. Globalization, though long proven to be problematic, remains the ultimate faith of many because it is so difficult to confront the local situation squarely – we find ourselves in desperate want of courage, motivation, and appeals when facing the local. Though there are yet more problems. When immersed in the world within their mobile phones, the Chinese art community (unsurprisingly) shows yet again, a certain ‘bluntness’—or rather an insensitivity to the reality. Private conversations on WeChat or its more secure alternatives (sometimes one must avoid Wechat censorship) are often characterized by opportunistic arguments that can constantly shift grounds from the left to the right. Such arguments can hardly leave space for future thoughts and are often no more than vehicles for one’s moral superiority, and obsessive confidence in one’s own knowledge. For the art practitioners who are already safely middle-class, and even part of the high society, they are equipped with a strong sense of reality as a result of their frequent travels between East and West: their friendships with Western art institutions; their expensive apartments and cars in major cities including Beijing and Shanghai; the education privilege their children would enjoy; and not least of all, the skyrocketing costs of artistic creation in recent years. Nevertheless, in the meantime, the truly complex battles in the real world have been telescoped, and the struggles of real people in faraway places are condensed into manageable sizes. Such a simplistic approach to reality also leads to an intentional oversight or partial sight when it comes to value judgements: they would hold fast to a value that they identify with, such as “freedom” in abstraction. Such is the art world in the cell phone. Self-proclaimed liberals spreading around excitable gossip about authoritarian governments. Some fantasize that they belong to the White middle-class and thus venerate the unfavorable coverage of China in the Western media. The more ambitious, on the other hand, fantasize that they are the country per se and earnestly devise all kinds of solutions to remedy the status quo. There are also many nationalists in the art world who embrace the “local” and “grassroots”, and regard them as localization enterprises – as a result, fully accepting the value system they entail. But there is no protest. I do not mean protest in the sense of the dissent. We do not even need to mention the risks it involves to be a dissenter. I mean instead, that we lack the kind of thinking produced right in the middle of the quagmire named reality, and that we lack, even more, the ability to look squarely into the clues that has helped fashion today’s reality. Perhaps the present art community in China should first learn how to go to the streets: to participate in movements, to debate with others in complex contexts, to create tools to resist police assaults, and to put down their cell phones. We can only point out, in a way that is rather pessimistic, that the art world in China teems with all varieties of performativity. The sense of the contemporary has not been fully internalized, yet one is already eager to demonstrate one’s superior knowledge. Such piecemeal knowledge, adulterated by various motivations and sophistication, are however not solid grounds for discussion. Behind such knowledge demonstrations are one’s appeal to power. One is adept at using one’s moral stance as a banner, or wielding it a weapon in attacking others. One sometimes does it with a loud battle cry, while at other times deliberately concealing one’s real stance. One can be good at posing as either politically correct or incorrect, depending on the situation, to enchant or to mislead younger art practitioners. One masquerades as a student in front of one’s seniors to gain resources, while acting as the authority in front of their younger peers to obtain power. All of these have been undermining the already rarefied atmosphere of art discussion. A Studio exhibition in Beijing, 2020, photo credit: Su Wei Some artists, however, chose to quietly rise against this absurd reality in the Chinese art world. Their agenda focuses on more physical participation, and seeks to carve out a space to think by giving away part of one’s self. Wu Wenguang, an independent documentary filmmaker, has been continuing his decade-long Folk Memory Project during the pandemic. The project titled “Passing Through,” registers the process in which Wu, in Yunnan, experiences a special period together with other filmmakers located elsewhere, with whom he has been working for a long time. The way they experience this together is called “online yoga”: they share their experience within a day, read poetry, or communicate other reading experiences and document their “time together” through film. Other artists, who may not have been well known in the Chinese art world, and who lacked exhibition opportunities, did not give up their artistic creation because of the pandemic or the pressure brought about by the survival pleas prevalent in the art world. Some of them work with a simple attitude and do not deliberately avoid real-life pressure. They polish their work in their own studios and through studio exhibitions initiated by artists themselves, thus finding a balance between art and reality. It is easier to experience a moderate sense of honesty, as well as palatable performativity, in such creations – especially when they are compared with certain works and exhibitions too eager to engage with reality. In addition, within the past few years there has been a number of artists and groups guided by left-wing ideas, who have used practices that intentionally provoke officialdom to give a voice to marginalized groups, and to find creative impetus in the private sector. Creations of such are promising, though they may still seem to lack a clear methodology and are not as satisfying in terms of artistic quality and creativity. Outside of the art world, the online community Douban ( www.douban.com ) presents the convergence of diverse experiences and reflections of young Chinese from China and around the world. The vibrance it promises seems a world apart from today’s feeble and arrogant art world. Some cultural figures are also taking action. The official media ThePaper took the bold initiative to host a column dedicated to the BLM campaign, in which all points of view (including those by researchers) are cited and set to contest one another. Other media platforms such as Jiemian and Economic Observer’s Book Review (which have long been known for their focus on contemporary cultural changes and marginalized groups in China), have also endeavored to stage valuable discussions despite the atmosphere of intense political pressure. These rare and precious actions salvage from the reality, a little space for the future. We cannot hear the gunfire from the battlefield, but we must understand that the gunfire is already everywhere. Su Wei is an art writer and curator based in Beijing. Previous Next

< Back Beating Around the Bush: Some Reflections on the Crisis of “Imported Cases” of Africans in Guangzhou 20 June 2020 Berhanu On April 15th, four days after the CNN coverage of the eviction of Africans in Guangzhou [1] , a message from a WeChat group [2] rang an alarm on my phone. Some Chinese volunteers helping the Africans’ in Guangzhou were just tipped off by a microblogger (the Chinese equivalent of Tweeter), who tagged the microblog of the Bureau of Guangzhou Public Security. The blogger asserted that those volunteers were calling for ordinary Chinese to help Africans, which would inevitably expand the pool of contacts [of asymptomatic carriers], during a crucial time when the Guangzhou authority was screening the population for epidemiological purposes and when nobody would know who had contracted the virus. “Are they [the volunteers] spreading [the COVID-19] intentionally?” the blogger asked rhetorically. Indignant at the blogger’s unfair charge against volunteers who aimed to address the clear and present threats, including displacement, the risk of contracting virus, panic, financial loss and hunger, I sent him a private message, intending to forestall his report. “Can you imagine the xenophobia in African societies would cause another wave of ‘imported cases’ of returning Chinese expats if the Africans in Guangzhou were not treated well?” I meant that there are millions of Chinese working and living in Africa, far outnumbered the Africans in China. In this deeply interwoven world, a flapping of a butterfly would not only trigger a tornado far away, but the tornado would backlash and engulf the butterfly in no time. The reply: “where are you from, idiot?”. And I was unfriended by him in a second. The blogger’s report seemed to have taken effect. The next day, several volunteers were summoned by the local policemen, and their actions were called to halt. The intervention dampened the volunteers’ enthusiasm and disrupted their charity work. Several WeChat groups initiated by volunteers to provide correct information, organise food delivery and translation services, were dismissed one by one. Though unfriended, I was still able to browse the microblogger’s webpage. I discovered that the screenshot of my short-lived conversation with him was posted atop. It was liked by hundreds and followed by many derisive mocks. Scrolling down the page, I found that he constantly hunts the misconducts of African students and passes his evidence to public authorities and other microbloggers. Likewise, the posts of the latter are teemed with anti-black, anti-Muslim, and even anti-feminism remarks. No wonder the volunteers fell prey — any assistance they offered to the evicted Africans would be reckoned as a collaboration with unwelcomed foreigners. But where does such hatred come from? How does it relate to the reality in Guangzhou? Like scientists who are able to determine the genetic composition of any life form, let me start by examining the emergence of this social phenomenon the same way. DNA sequencing of the Microbloggers’ narrative Scholars have recently noticed the right-wing populism emerging on Chinese social media and the jargons netizens have coined. The so-called White-Leftist ( baizuo ), repeatedly used in netizen’s vilifying their enemies, is key to the understanding of the ideological genesis. Cheng Yinghong (2018) argues that the neologism reflects the identification of some Chinese with their imagined western (white) world, as well as their vicarious lamentation on the decline of western civilization, which they blame on the leftists’ advocating multiculturalism, feminism, and immigrants’ rights. Just as the Western ‘White Left’ is the internal enemy to the Western civilization, the Chinese liberals are both ‘White Left’ and traitors of the Han Chinese [3] , the majority of Chinese people. Han-traitor ( hanjian ) and White-leftist are thus used interchangeably. [4] Zhang Chenchen (2020) reaches a similar conclusion through qualitative analysis of more than 1,000 postings from a popular online community zhihu , a Quora-like forum, offering a portrayal of the political stances of well-educated and well-informed Chinese internet users. They criticise Western hegemony on one hand, and construct China’s ethno-racial and political identities through downplaying the ‘inferior’ non-Western groups, namely the immigrants, Muslims, and feminists, on the other. [5] While Cheng and Zhang’s discussion help us to explore the way some Chinese netizens make sense of and place themselves in the world’s hierarchy, my aim is to look into other factors that contribute to the identity making of the microbloggers as well as a few new trends. Forging a coherent identity nonetheless involves contradiction. Many microbloggers involved in the anti- discourses see themselves as rather victims. The threat is from the alleged high birth rate of immigrants and domestic Muslims. They quote the high birth rates of sub-Saharan countries moving to Europe and that of Chinese Muslims, believing that the birth control policy on Han Chinese would only shrink the relative size of the Han people and undermine the nation’s future. Their misgivings have theoretical ground, though, from an influential book titled Big Country of an Empty Nest . The book was forbidden in mainland China in 2007 for its criticism of the one-child policy. It argues that if couples are not allowed to give birth to more than two children, the population would inevitably decline, and the aging parents in their empty ‘nests’ would have no children to take care of them. The ban of the book was not lifted until 2013 when China’s stringent birth control policy loosened. Yet the anxiety passed on to cyberspace, this time projecting to the growing presence of domestic Muslims and Africans in Chinese cities, quite similar to the Great Replacement theory [6] upheld by their western counterparts. Feminism, which embraces liberty on marriage among other political and social equalities, becomes the antithesis of the defenders of the nation, too, because any Chinese women who marry out to other races would be the loss of the assets of the civilization. Perhaps what runs deep is kind of misogyny: men desired women; but owing to a sense of deprivation they instead grow hostility towards their potential, marriageable nationals who turn to other nationals or races. And this misogynist sentiment takes place at the level of civilization which at some points is criticizing the state, which I shall discuss later. Of course, it is not new, for the hatred towards some African students has its precedent in the 1980s. [7] Back then, the Chinese students conflicted with African students who played loud music and dated Chinese girls. [8] Thirty years later, thanks to the expansion of Chinese education system and the Belt and Road Initiative, the African students now make up 1/7 of the total overseas students by 2016, [9] and the trope of “taking our girls ” comes back on cyberspace, this time fuelled by a new charge. The African students are imagined as receiving decent scholarships and other “super-national treatments” by the Chinese government and lead a carefree life, in contrast to many poor Chinese families who cannot afford university tuition. Of course, this charge is unfounded, because the self-funded African students have surpassed the Chinese scholarship holders since 2005 and made up 83% of the total population in 2015. [10] In the meantime, xenophobia seems to have spilled over to Whites as well, whose prestige has been declining in the past decade, partly from the widening chances of Chinese’ everyday exposure to them. One of the racial epithets of the white is “white monkey”. Many Caucasian expats are hired in business promotions such as real estate sales in China’s cities in order to create an “international” image. The effect of the commercial ruse is paradoxical, for it presupposes the association of business success with Caucasian faces for the Chinese, but in the meantime damage the reputation of some serious businessmen, because the hired performances of Caucasian expats are seen as monkey shows in the zoo. [11] To the extent that the change of attitude draws on the employment relations and economic status, the perception of expats through the prism of race is laced with snobbery pinpointed by an assertion of Chinese identity thanks to China’s economic ascending. As a consequence, being a Chinese and ‘yellow’ is no longer something embarrassing but worthy championing. This may explain the emergence of a new racial epithet “yellow left” from some microbloggers. The “yellow left”, as Zhang Chenchen (2020) quotes from the answers from zhihu , are “a growing number of elite youngsters in the more developed regions who are out of touch with reality and overflowing with sympathy.” Instead of “white left”, the use of “yellow left” seems to reflect a nuanced identity shift by which the “yellow race” moved up the rung of the racial ladder. And, calling a Chinese compatriot who endorses liberal values as such implies a fiercer denouncement of the latter’s disloyalty despite common racial ground, quintessentially represented by the skin colour. Just as David Gilmore (2009) reveals that any misogynist attitudes entail a tension-ridden state of men, [12] we can see that the coexistence of the repressed “feminine” weakness and a promotion of masculine, martial valour in the usernames of some popular microbloggers (often with 100,000 followers) promoting the anti- narratives. There are usernames stating more explicit political agendas or targeting more specifically at certain groups, such as “anti-black/green spokesman” (green symbolizes Muslims), “Removing multiculturalism”, “Society of Jokes of the Black”, and so on. But the username of the microblogger who reported the volunteering to the police is “helpless benevolence”. Other usernames valorise the ancient military glory of Han Chinese, such as “Han’s battle tiger”, “Heart of the Han’s soul”, “Guangdong governorate-general adjutant”, a military rank of Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and “Yang the sixth”, a legendary marshal of Song dynasty (960-1279) who led his entire clan fighting the Liao (916-1125) army in the northern China. Besides the cultural frenzy and xenophobic rhetoric, the commercialization of the China’s Internet industry cannot be neglected. The topics (hashtags) of some microbloggers are called super-topic ( chaohua ), which is more than an ‘ordinary topic’ that any netizen is free to join and leave his or her comments. One needs to be a member (fan) of a community run by a moderator of the super-topic so that her or his comments of the super-topic is seen by others joining the same super-topic. The moderator, or the microblogger of the super-topic, has to keep the community size stable or expand it by cultivating a consensus and eliminating any disharmony among the community members, for any discordance among members would cause some to leave the community/super-topic. According to the regulation of the platform, the microblogger has to “clock in” and renew their posts daily. Bigger the community, the higher the network flow, more valuable the super-topic community for advertisers, and more the microbloggers can earn. In other words, cyber-politics is driven by profitability. This, of course, leads to enclosures in the public sphere. Just as my conversation with the blogger only ‘feeds the troll’, the troll preys on external dissidents to grow bigger. With the growth of the community of homogeneous minds, even a single word can elicit huge repercussion among its members, such as the black, blue, white, yellow as well as binaries such as left/right, female/male. In this regard, the growth of the hatred narratives just resembles the replication of a single stranded RNA with a number of nucleic acid sequence. Who are the Africans in Guangzhou? If the blacks are encapsulated in a single Chinese character by the microbloggers, then, to what extent does it represent reality? Is it able to account for the complexities of the ‘blacks’ in Guangzhou? Tong Tong market at Sanyuanli. The stores open until 6:30 p.m. In fact, the majority of dark-skinned people in Guangzhou are mainly traders from the continent of Africa, who buy from Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, and other cities in China. But it is useful to point out that not all Africans are black if we consider people from Maghreb countries and the European descents, and that ‘black’ peoples, as outsiders would foist the colour off on them, may refer to one another as red, coffee, or white on relative basis. African scholar Adams Bodomo traces the exodus of African businessmen to Hongkong and China to the financial crisis in the 1990s. [13] With the passage of time, the African sojourners have gradually transformed the city landscape, to the extent that the business hub they frequent is labelled as ‘chocolate city’. [14] At Sanyuanli, Xiaobei and Taojin (literally Goldrush, I should point out) of Guangzhou, where the metro lines highways converge and make transportation very convenient, Africans gravitate to wholesale malls and a warren of retail shopfronts of clothes, shoes, watches, mobile phones, curtains, ceramic tiles and so on. At the Tong Tong market at Sanyuanli Road (Fig. 1), for instance, an African woman can bargain the price and pick twenty shoes from one stall, and another twenty from the second stall. Then, she can have all the shoes packed and her name marked on the package at the back of the mall. Outside of the mall, a line of trolley men and taxi drivers are waiting, who would pull the packages to storage houses of cargo companies or drive directly to the airport. If she is hungry, she can find several African restaurants run by a few Africans’ Chinese wives serving fufu , the typical staple food made of banana in western African countries, or nsima , the thick, white porridge of corn, to the very palate of Malawian or Eastern Africa nationals. Of course she can go to the MacDonald’s next door, the symbol of globalization, for a quick meal. She can get a local phone number from a counter in the mall, having WeChat and VPN installed by the young man behind the counter in addition to WhatsApp and Facebook on her phone. The young man typically comes from a hinterland province and has worked in an electrical company in the Pearl River Delta or so. The WeChat and VPN, restaurants, hotels, plus money exchange services run by Chinese Muslims, and cargo services and custom companies in the airport laid out the localized business infrastructure for the African traders. Haussa people from Nigerian roaming the streets of Xiaobei, the market opens until midnight. Yet businessmen and women need to build connections and trust. Anyone who does business needs to face many uncertainties, so are the Africans in Guangzhou. Gordon Mathew et al (2017) has offered an all-embracing account of the trade activities of the Africans. One of the common complaints of African is that what they get from the supplier is different from or inferior to what they had ordered, so that it is “better to cry in China than to cry back in Africa”, that is, a careful check of the goods before shipment to Africa. [15] Owing to the language barrier and unmatched expectations, many Chinese consider their African clients “troublesome”. This catch phrase, mafan in Chinese, is readily parroted by Africans in their everyday English. “Too many mafan ”, several businesswomen have complained about their relationship with the Chinese to me. Nevertheless, some Africans and Chinese are wise enough to reduce mafan by binding their business partnership. The story of Namazzi, a Uganda lady is exemplar in this regard. [16] Unlike her home country where foreigners, including Chinese, find business expediency thanks to the “colonial system”, Namazzi tells me that Guangzhou is not an easy place to set up a cargo company because it requires so long a process and so much paperwork. Instead, she hired a Chinese young man from hinterland province to register the company and do the paperwork. She pays the ‘dummy boss’ one thousand dollars a month, and helps him buy a car, so that the boy can run some side business such as driving people to the airport in the evening. “If you work with someone, you must help them also grow”, said Namazzi. Namazzi even makes Chinese friends of the same age set in Guangzhou and hosts their visit to her country. There, she has her countrymen, who lack capital, buy goods on credit from the Chinese shop owners by referring to her name. The Chinese would first call Namazzi to confirm that the Uganda customers know Namazzi in person and say to the customers that if they get the goods on credit, they must ship the goods from China with Namazzi’s cargo. If someone in Uganda does mafan for the Chinese, she or he would just call Namazzi. And Namazzi has many of her mafan solved by Chinese friends in Guangzhou. The business network even takes deeper roots in the Guangzhou soil. Numerous scholarly works have shed light on the interracial marriage, the Igbo men from Nigeria and their Chinese wives in particular, whose unions stabilize the trans-continental business. [17] In the similar vein, religious activities of both African Muslims and Christians in Guangzhou have been localised to some extent. Close to the Guangzhou railway station, the Saad bin Abi Waqas Mosque, a sacred place where the Prophet’s legendary maternal uncle Waqas was buried, becomes a pilgrim to African Muslims. It does not host special service for the participating Africans, but sometimes delivers preaching to its Chinese followers (Hui and Uyghur ethnicities) on keeping good faith and conducting good business with foreigners. The main hall, solemn and tidy, is open for both Chinese, African, Arabs, Pakistanis, and Indian Muslims for meditation. [18] In another mosque, a Malian Muslim leads the worship for both African and Chinese on behalf of the Imam thanks to the Malian’s mastery of Chinese, Arabic, English, and French. Besides his business, he also helped his mosque mates with visa formalities. Indeed, to some extent the churches and mosques serve as the asylums for overstayers, who have long been a headache for Guangzhou Immigration and police. The Malian as a religious broker indeed play a role here, in addition to the Mosque’s provision of food and accommodation to Muslim sojourners, making it a caravanserai in the Guangzhou city. For Christians, one of the now renowned city spectacles is the Sacred Heart Cathedral’s African congregation. Established in 1863, the church’s Sunday mass now offers English service for Africans, mostly Igbo Nigerians. The church used to be open to non-believers, but when I was about to enter the mass, two Nigerians standing at the entrance checked if everyone was Christian, and those who did not give a positive answer were denied access. In the courtyard next to the main hall, a white shelter hosts another mass. Inside it the whole membership is dancing and singing the name of the Lord and Jesus– the effervescent Pentecostal spirit [19] sometimes is eye-opening to the Chinese onlookers. Yet many African Pentecostals told me that the Sacred Heart Cathedral is not their first option, or simply not “their religion”. I joined several Pentecostal congregations through the invitation of my Caribbean and African friends. The first church I attended was run by a Congolese pastor and attended by twenty-plus Africans. When the soundproof door closed behind me and the thick curtain on it was drawn—the room seemed to have adapted from a music studio—the thunderous preaching and the breathless translation by a Ghanaian sitting next to him split one’s ears. One of the gospels of the rhythmised sermon was that with one dollar one deposits in God’s place, he will get three, five, and even twenty in return. But at the end of the service, the pastor said that the conference room rent of 1200 yuan was due. Since the donation he collected from this service was not enough, he would have his assistant call each participant for 100 yuan after the service. The second one, presided by a Kenyan pastor and on a different floor of the same building, was more cordial and homely. Women, including a Chinese lady, were sitting in the front with their children. I remember one of the babies untended by her mom started crawling under people’s legs. She was grabbed by a man sitting at the side of the room when she was too close to the auditorium, and the man gave me an apologizing smile. He turned out to be the baby’s father, who had run a business in Guangzhou for years. The intervals of preaching and dancing were for men to exchange business information, mostly outside of the chamber. Each time the participants are offered food prepared by women, such as curry rice with barbecue drumsticks, and occasionally birthday cakes of the kids of the church members. Later, I attended a third church, which was operated by a Nigerian pastor and his wife. Like the Kenyan pastor, he often used a handkerchief to wipe off the sweat off his brow during his passionate preaching, gesticulation, and gyration back and forth among members. The congregation was asked to read selected passages from the bible, and our souls often awakened by the interrogative shout of the pastor at the face. “Do you understand?!” Besides the pastor’s arduous preaching, there were the collective prayers. I remember that we laid hands for those who kneel down before the pastor in order to lift them up from suffering or weakness of faith, for the enveloped red notes with Chairman Mao’s figure on them in a shining aluminium basket, and for the newly wed. The couple, a Nigerian husband and his Tanzanian wife, nervous yet joyful, received the blessings from the pastor, their parents, and several guest bishops coming from as far as the United States. Heidi Hauge (2013) notes that a ‘reversed evangelism’ prevails in Pentecostal churches in Guangzhou. As Europeans are seen to have abandoned their mission, Africans are given responsibility for evangelizing the Gospel, and China is soon to be won over for God. In light of this creed, China’s prosperity and progress is only the achievement of a worldly nation, and the ordinary Chinese patriotism is merely a display of pomp and pageantry. “Ten more years, and we will no longer remember this place because there will be such a mighty change and shaking.” One pastor in his sermon claimed during China’s sixtieth anniversary in 2009 (ibid). I haven’t heard about the contents alike when I joined these Pentecostal churches. My presence as a Chinese may have impeded pastors to claim so, or that the stringent visa policies have dampened their ambitions over the years. Several Nigerians grudged to me about the 30-day business visa which tight-jacketed their business activities. It takes about 45 days to browse shops and goods, place the order, and wait for the production and then check the quality and design of the goods before shipping them to Africa. The year 2009, they recalled, was a turning point when the local police chased one illegal stayer or two, who jumped out of one building and died of heart attack. [20] The Nigerians and African protested, resulting in only stricter visa policy and the local government’s control over the immigration through discouraging landlords in downtown districts from leasing houses to them. This policy, however, contributes to the scattering of African traders to neighbouring cities, and perhaps putting them in direct contacts with manufacturers. Still, the population of Nigerian community has dropped from some four thousand to five or six hundred, according to the estimate of an Igbo businessman. More illegal entries are under the radar, he tells me, and the mores of Nigerians are corrupted because of transgressions of overstayers or from overstaying itself. Facing such community plight, the pastor warns church attendants to refrain from any illegal activities such as drug trafficking, because the Pentecostal church, where people are bathed in the Holy Spirit, does not allow any evil nor any witchcraft which had been practiced among Igbos. The pastor himself was in a precarious situation, too. He had to renew his visa on an annual basis for the past nineteen years, another Nigerian told me, and he began to seriously consider the option of leaving China for good to America. Beating the bush, and around the Bush Regardless of the levels of interactions of the Africans with locals in Guangzhou, the pastor’s prophecy came brutally true. After the end of 2019, the pandemic hit Wuhan city hard, and then the entire China and the world. A sharp turn of the post-Wuhan pandemic, from domestic view, was the ‘imported cases’ at the border cities and metropolises of China, after the government had implemented aggressive measures to contain the virus. Not only the epicentre Wuhan (from Jan 23 to April 8), other major cities had been locked down for quite a while. Faced the ever-changing situations, local people’s adrenaline roller-coastered. When they just became desensitized, the Guangzhou public security reported an incident on 1st April. A Nigerian businessman, tested positive, bit a nurse’s face when he forced his way from the hospital. Prior to this incident, the Guangzhou CDC [21] announced on 22nd March that immigrants entered Guangzhou after 8thMarch, regardless of their nationality, should self-quarantine for 14 days. The Nigerian entered Guangzhou on 20th March and was tested positive on 23rd March and hospitalized. The CDC traced his contact history, discovering on 2nd April that the hostess of the restaurant he frequented was positive by Nucleic test, so was her husband, and their daughter who had travelled home and a boyfriend of hers were tested positive on 4thApril, too. In that afternoon, all the shops (except pharmacy’s) in that area were ordered to close for 14 days. The next day, the two downtown districts of Guangzhou, Yuexiu and Baiyun, and the Huilai county, where the daughter stayed, escalated to medium-risk areas. [22] Residential distribution of Africans in Guangzhou. This map draws on a survey of a small number of African population in 2018 and shows that they tended to cluster in Guangyuanxi area (upper left) and Xiaobei area (lower right). Blue/brown colours indicate female and male respondents and the signs of moon and cross represent Muslims and Christians respectively. The sifting of African population in Guangzhou began no later than 6th April, when African residents were asked to show their passports, registration forms, and their travel history. Owing to the so-called asymptomatic transmission [23] , all of the people with contact history should be collectively isolated for 14 days in designated facilities and tested at least twice during the isolation. Since the malls in Xiaobei and Sanyuanli were frequented by African buyers, those who reported to have shown up there were ordered to implement collective quarantine, too. Those without contact history with confirmed cases and the marketplaces are ordered to self-quarantine at home. The people who knocked African’s doors involved health workers, translators, and local police with the assistance of sub-district government and neighbourhood community ( shequ ), the grassroots administration assigned with the mission of residential registration and population control. It was less obvious whether the local government used one stone to kill two birds, namely the disease monitoring and the immigration control over illegal entrees and overstayers. [24] But the ways they handle the issue proved clumsily hashed and the consequence disruptive. [25] On April 7th, some Africans became displaced, because they were denied access to their residential community, as evidenced by posts at the entrance of a neighbourhood community. Later news coverage revealed that it started in a hotel, where the Africans refused to stay for another 14-day quarantine because their visa would expire and despite that officials believed that they had stepped out of the hotel. They finally were let out, but ordered by the officials that they should not go back in. [26] Part of the Africans were made homeless, according to a local social worker, because they refused home quarantine as this would ‘limit their freedom’. Agitated, one of them even jumped off his balcony on the third floor. Many more dragged their suitcases, wandering in the city, only to find that malls, restaurants, and buses were closed to them. The homeless Africans video-called home countries, and upon receiving many video clips and messages, a Kenyan independent media wode maya (literally ‘my mom!’, a common Chinese exclamation) with 366,000 subscribers reported this, which followed by thousands of angry comments on boycotting Chinese and Chinese goods in Africa. [27] On the same day, a Guangzhou local was investigated by the police because he spread a rumour which went viral on WeChat a day earlier. He averred that a field hospital would be in place to host the “300,000 black people”, and the entire Guangzhou population would contract the virus shortly. The evicted and those who were ordered to isolate themselves were indignant, questioning why the whites, South Americans, African descents holding US and UK passports or the Chinese wives and children cohabited with them had not been tested nor quarantined; why long-time African residents in Guangzhou had to do nucleic acid test; and why some of them were tested many times without knowing the result, contrary to the promises of the testers. It must be racist, targeting Africans from Africa only, many of my African friends concluded. Yet, upon scrutiny in a month later, I believe the sweeping action was less intentioned than an institutional blunder. The measures meted out by local government through neighbourhood control is key to the understanding of institutional efforts. China used to have a district, sub-district ( jiedao ), and neighbourhood community ( shequ) in its urban governance administrative hierarchy. Now the grid was introduced below the neighbourhood community since the 2000s. A grid is a cluster of households, ranging from 50 in the countryside to 1000 in cities. The grid manager and workers assume jobs assigned from above. During the outbreak of SARS, for instance, Biao Xiang (2020) finds grid managers “visit door to door to check everyone’s temperature, hand out passes which allow one person per household to leave home twice a week and, in the case of collective quarantine, deliver food to the doorstep of all families three times a day… Once the central government declared the war on virus, in no time the entire nation put itself under gridlock.” [28] Starting from April 6th, the local authorities operated in a similar fashion as Xiang portrays. At first there was the banning of Africans entering into their neighbourhood community, followed by the hasty arrangement of collective quarantine in hotels. One of my African friends reported that policemen drove her countrymen at night to quarantine hotels just to avoid public attention. For home-quarantined Africans, neighbourhood community staff began to take care of their daily life, such as ordering food and scheduling the test. The involvement of the police was noticeable in addition to the control from neighbourhood communities. Some policemen were from the Bureau of Public Security in charge of domestic issues. When the eviction took place, a few kind-hearted landlords were willing to offer home-quarantine for Africans, but they were pressured to give up by the policeman, who warned that asymptomatic carriers would put the entire neighbourhood at stake. Other policemen are actually border security enforcement under the newly established Immigration Bureau, whose functions were just separated from the Ministry of Public Security in 2019. Wearing the same uniform as common policemen, these immigration officers hold the power to check visa status and detain overstayers for repatriation. The displaced Africans in the headlines of international media, regardless of their volition to conform or resist, were in fact the ones missed out by the grid work and who, when roaming the street, were captured by patrolling police and sent to hotels for collective quarantine. In other words, the police and neighbourhood community/grid acted together to put Africans in grids according to their respective epidemiological conditions. While eviction was not among their goals, it served as necessary means to control the disease through a combination of handy apparatuses by the government. There was perhaps the institutional embolism. The Public Security or the police system seems less coordinated with the diplomatic line. As revealed by later news coverages, especially a Nigerian reporter’s detailed report, the joint action meted out to African nationals was done without adequate communication with African consulates. The tension culminated at the night of April 9th, when the Acting Consul General of the Nigerian consulate ranted at the Director General of Guangzhou Foreign Affairs Office in front of a hotel, after patrolling van took eleven African nationals (including eight Nigerians, two Cote d’Ivoire nationals and one Benin Republic citizen) whose passports were ‘seized’ by the Chinese at the reception. While whose fault was it is left to the good judgment of the readers, my emphasis is that the scenario was occasioned by confused tongues: when the Nigerian charged that Guangzhou police “harassed” African residents, the Chinese official denied that no one was “arrested”. When the recorded scenario was uploaded to YouTube, many cheered the Nigerian diplomat because he spoke on behalf of all African people and, according to some, should be elected “our president”. The arm crossing of the Chinese and his efforts to calm down his interlocutor, on the contrary, was interpreted as signs of covering up and not responsive to the issue. The day followed witnessed whopping escalation of diplomatic tension, and inhuman became the catchphrase of the diatribe. African ambassadors in Beijing demanded “the cessation of forceful testing, quarantine and other inhuman treatments”, and that “threats of revocation of visas, arrest, detention and deportation of African legal migrants for no cogent reason which infringes on their human rights.” The next day, the Nigerian Speaker of the House of Representatives, laying his mobile phone showing the video of the confrontation between officials in Guangzhou on the table, expressed displeasure over the inhuman treatment when he summoned the Chinese ambassador to Nigeria. [29] The video of the meeting soon appeared on Chinese independent media, and was interpreted by the audience as the ambassador bowing to the Nigerian congressman, a sheer humiliation by the latter, before it was deleted by the webmasters. The charge of China’s inhuman treatment of Africans continued in both the Nigerian media and Twitter of another spokesman of the House of Representative. In a television debate, the guests evoked an image (work) from one of China’s museums, where a picture of a chimpanzee is juxtaposed next to an African (again an dehumanizing action), [30] and suggested a number of retaliations, including sending the illegal Chinese home, the nationalization of Chinese investments, cutting off Chinese loan, and bringing China to the court for causing damage to Nigeria for spreading the virus. * These events all happened in a time when I joined the volunteers to moderate the impacts of local decrees on the Africans in Guangzhou from mid-April to May. Earlier than that, as I got to know later, two Chinese students who had conducted research related to the African diaspora took the initiative of the aid, and many more volunteers, particularly who versed in English and French joined the group. In the meantime, I was bombarded by messages, news, outcries, accusations, debates, from several research networks including both Chinese and African scholars, while texting and calling my previous informants to check on them since I was away in Australia. Some replied, some didn’t. No one had the whole picture, even the number of African expats in Guangzhou, i.e. 4,553 reported by the Guangzhou authority in a briefing on April 12. The number was too exact to be trusted because it varied dramatically from different sources in the past decade, [31] and I know some were hiding in their friend’s places because of the fear for deportation after testing. Some Africans residing in other cities of China and African descents in Guangzhou were acting in the meantime, delivering food and sending money to those forced to quarantine in hotels. The Chinese volunteers had better cooperate with these Africans and possibly African students studying in China, because the two groups are ideal mediators between Chinese authorities and their countrymen. The Africans in quarantine were less likely to be well informed as they relied heavily on their own network. It was the harsh epidemiological control that exposed them to head-on encounters with local police and grassroots government staff who do not speak good English. Even the notice for quarantine was in Chinese. But trust between Chinese and African volunteers was hard to win in such a short notice, especially when the diplomatic tension was already in place. I have no clue how Africans were helping Africans. My best guess is that the Africans and Chinese were digging the tunnel from opposite sides of the hill. Once dismissed Chinese volunteers reassembled, continuing fighting fake news by providing correct information, helping with accommodation and ordering food for the Africans (sometimes from their own pockets) as well as preparing the brochures for the installation of health monitoring code on the mobile phones of the quarantined. Without the code one could not travel to other cities by train or by plane. I joined a group of twenty volunteers, whose leader managed to secure from the local government a list of 200 plus Africans and several Indians and Pakistani collectively quarantined in several hotels. We were each assigned 10 people, making sure that they take the nucleic acid test on the 7th day and the 14th day and report their body temperature daily, as well as addressing their immediate needs and listening to their complaints. Their difficulties vary. A common complaint was locals’ running away in front of them, which was very embarrassing and even traumatic for them. An Ethiopian gentleman’s response was admirable in this regard, for he would stay all day in the hotel room in order not to scare the pedestrians, even though he had a habit of walking after dinner and was suffering from diabetes. An Eastern African businessman complained that no taxi would take him for a test in the designated hospital. Taking for granted that I was in Guangzhou, he texted me that “please come and taste me in my hotel”, a typo which really made us laugh. A Senegalese declined my call in the beginning but sent me his test report upon my request. It was not until I received a phone call from Guangzhou police that I realized that he was suspicious of my identity. Many more are running out of money because the hotel fares were on them, and two women could only afford a meal a day. Sending some money through my WeChat wallet was what I could offer only. Several scholars who had researched the Africans in Guangzhou also worked together in drafting possible solutions to local government to ameliorate the consequences on the Africans, including the provision of humanitarian remedies to those short of money or food regardless of their visa statuses. The government may have underestimated the difficulties in handling the African expats in their jurisdiction, which backfired and triggered diplomatic protests against China when the incident unfolded. However, given that the border is closed and only a few international flights are operating, and that the international NGOs are beyond reach, practically, the local government has to take care of the African expats at the end of the day, and the localization of humanitarian assistance seemed inevitable. [32] We know our proposal has reached a certain level of officials and the government did take some positive steps, but we were not able to get direct feedback because of the bureaucratic procedures. This is how things work in China, to my understanding. Nevertheless, as a Chinese national I was struck by the whopping of Nigerian media and politicians in denouncing China. In the past few years, the country came across to me for conferring noble titles to a few Chinese expats. [33] Though often portrayed as the glory of overseas Chinese by Chinese media, such attainments could not have been achieved without the openness of Nigeria’s society. Besides, to the extent that the Igbo and Hausa in Guangzhou hardly mixed with one another (owing to the entrenched ethnic tension and hatred, a schism may go back to the Nigerian civil war in 1966-1970), how come the whole nation now turns against China? In fact, Nigerian nationals and netizens also mentioned the hospitality of their country towards Chinese as opposed to the maltreatment in Guangzhou. But I discovered the antagonism drew on other anecdotal accounts. On Naraland.com , a popular national forum, a thread stated that the Nigerians had been clean before their departure to China, and that they were tested positive only through injection of virus by Chinese doctors. Another had it that blood tests were made to Nigerians in Guangzhou because Chinese doctors were curious about why the Nigerian genes were so strong to survive Ebola. There is fake news, too. A screenshot of a WeChat dialogue between a Chinese an African was taken as evidence of racial eviction. However, apparently the broken Chinese from the dialogue was awkwardly translated from English. [34] The confidence on Nigerian’s national hygiene capacity and the nation’s genetical robustness crept in, precluding the possibility that Guangzhou authority may have had any justifiable epidemiological considerations. Retaliation at country level is a must, so is the in-time evacuation of suffering nationals caught in Guangzhou. On 31 May, 268 Nigerian nationals were evacuated “over virus and racism” by a flight and from arranged by the Nigerian authority, and all the evacuees will be proceeding on another 14 days quarantine. [35] China’s spokesman of foreign ministry has tried to harmonize the diplomatic relations with African countries by reiterating the principle of “all foreigners are treated equally”, “reject all racist and discriminatory remarks” because “the Chinese people always see in African people partners and brothers through thick and thin”, without specifying who promotes the racism, racial thinking, or racialized domestic and immigrants’ issues. [36] African independent media and politicians and the narrative of English media highlighted China’s eviction, mistreating and dehumanizing of African expats without referring to either the epidemiological situations or the illegal visa status of Africans. The matter of illegality only surfaced when Nigeria brought to the fore the illegality of Chinese expats. Both narratives seem to beat around the bush, while the enforcement of each country were beating the bush where expats were inhabiting. At the end of the day, one’s home country is believed to be the safest and cleanest, while another country is always a hell. Now the Chinese expats in several African countries are appealing for evacuation arranged by the Chinese government, particularly after the murder of three Chinese in Zambia on 24th May, a tragedy which is allegedly associated with the Mayor of Lusaka’s crusade of a number of downtown Chinese businesses who denied access to locals and were labelled as discriminatory. [37] To quote the Indian scholar Arundhati Roy writing on the pandemic, “the lockdown worked like a chemical experiment that suddenly illuminated hidden things.” [38] But in the case of African expats in Guangzhou and its aftermath, the pandemic is illuminating and shadowing at the same time. The local authority’s harsh measures and the immigrants’ suffering are exposed to the spotlight of the media. In contrast, both discourses of the nation-states portraying themselves as the ardent protectors of their citizens, and the cyberspace narratives celebrating unadulterated ethno-racial identity, have concealed the everyday experience of the African businessmen and their interactions with local Chinese. It was a blend of painstakingness, liveliness and entrepreneurship despite many restraints. If there is any “wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for years”, [39] it is the fragility embedded in the low-end globalization [40] which has never gained legitimacy in the globalizing fad before the pandemic. Indeed, the pandemic has just reversed the flow of globalization, leaving international immigrants stranded, who are still struggling hard to gain the protection from their respective countries and securing a ticket of return flight. Berhanu is an anthropologist in African Studies. [1] Jenni Marsh, Shawn Deng and Nectar Gan. 2020. “Africans in Guangzhou are on edge, after many are left homeless amid rising xenophobia as China fights a second wave of coronavirus”. April 11 (updated on April 13). CNN news. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/10/china/africans-guangzhou-china-coronavirus-hnk-intl/index.html . [Accessed: 6 June 2020] [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinesehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese [4] Cheng Yinghong. 2018. “White-lefties and the traitor of the Han: The Other within the Nation-state.” Available at: https://www.chinesepen.org/blog/archives/117560 . [Accessed: 10 June 2020]. [5] Zhang Chenchen. 2020. “Right-wing populism with Chinese characteristics? Identity, otherness and global imaginaries in debating world politics online.” European Journal of International Relations vol. 26(1): pp. 88-115. [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement [7] The earliest account of the African students’ experience in China see Immanuel Hevi, 1963. An African Student in China. London: Pall Mall Press. [8] Winslow Robertson. 2020. “A brief history of anti-black violence in China.” Available at: https://africasacountry.com/2020/05/a-brief-history-of-anti-black-violence-in-china Also Barry Sautman. 1994. Anti-Black Racism in Post-Mao China. The China Quarterly. vol 138. pp. 413-437. [9] Li, Anshan. 2018. “African Students in China: Research, Reality, and Reflection.” African Studies Quarterly. vol. 17(4). pp. 5-44. There were 61,594 African students out of 442,773 international students in 2016. [10] Ibid. [11] Alice Yan. 2017. “White people wanted: a peek into China’s booming ‘rent a foreigner’ industry.” June 10. South China Morning Post. Available at: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2096341/white-people-wanted-peek-chinas-booming-rent-foreigner-industry . [12] Gilmore, David D. 2009. Misogyny: The Male Malady: University of Pennsylvania Press. [13] Adams Bodomo. 2012. Africans in China. Cambria Press: Amherst, New York. [14] Bill Schiller. 2009. Big Trouble in China’s Chocolate City. The Star. 1 Aug. Available at: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2009/08/01/big_trouble_in_chinas_chocolate_city.html [Accessed: 6 June 2020]. See also Pan, Chinglin and Ding Yuan. 2013. “Chocolate City as a Concept and as Visible African Space of Change and Diversity.” In Z. Huang and J. Zhang (eds.) Discussions on Socio-economic Transition: Urbanisation, Industrialization and Cultural Survival in China. Intellectual Property Publishing House, pp. 47-78. [15] Mathews Gordon, Linessa Dan Lin, Yang Yang. 2017. The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. p.88. [16] I used pseudonyms to protect the identity of interviewees. I am grateful to Ms. Genis for her kind assistance with the access and interviews and many discussions. [17] Qiu, Yu. 2016. Cleanliness and Danger: Destigmatisation and Identity Politics in Nigerian-Chinese Intimate Relationships in South China. Open times. vol. 4. pp. 88-107. [18] Mathews Gordon, Linessa Dan Lin, Yang Yang. 2017. The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. p. 167. [19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecostalism [20] Bill Schiller. 2009. Big Trouble in China’s Chocolate City. The Star. 1 Aug. Available at: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2009/08/01/big_trouble_in_chinas_chocolate_city.html [Accessed: 6 June 2020]. [21] http://www.chinacdc.cn/en/ [22] Guangzhou Municipal Health Commission. 2020. “Updates on the Risk levels of the Epidemiological Conditions of Guangzhou Districts.” April 6. Guangzhou Municipal Health Commission webpage. Available at: http://wjw.gz.gov.cn/ztzl/xxfyyqfk/yqtb/content/post_5759569.html [Accessed: 6 June 2020] [23] Xinhua News Agency. 2020. “What is asymptomatic carriers, and how to discover them?” April 1. Available at: http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2020-04/01/c_1210540120.htm . [Accessed: 6 June 2020] [24] Police raid see Mathews Gordon, Linessa Dan Lin, Yang Yang. 2017. The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. pp. 124-125. [25] I establish the timeline of the incident from a number of sources including my African friends, local social worker, several volunteers, and both Chinese and English news reports. [26] Ikenna Emewu. 2020. “Guangzhou: Exclusive full report of the face-off, maltreatment allegation of Africans in China.” Africa China Press Centre. April 24. Available at: https://africachinapresscentre.org/2020/04/24/guangzhou-exclusive-full-report-of-the-face-off-maltreatment-allegation-of-africans-in-china/ [Accessed: 6 June 2020] [27] Mr Ghanababy. 2020. “Chinese Discriminate Africans Because Of Covid-19?”. April 7. Available at: https://youtu.be/qCea1oIKpc0 [28] Xiang, Biao. 2020. “From Chain Reaction to Grid Reaction: Mobilities & Restrictions during SARS & Coronavirus” Available at: https://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/2020/from-chain-reaction-to-grid-reaction-mobilities-restrictions-during-sars-coronavirus/ [29] Chukwunanuekpere. 2020. “Video: Gbajabiamila attacks Chinese Ambassador over treatment of Nigerians in China.” iBrandTV. April 11. Available at: https://ibrandtv.com/video-gbajabiamila-attacks-chinese-ambassador-over-treatment-of-nigerians-in-china/ [30] Plus TV Africa. 2020. “House of Rep Seeks Investigation on Validity Of Chinese Nationals In Nigeria.” May 1. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1hhImz-jSE [31] Pan, Chinglin and Ding Yuan. 2013. “Chocolate City as a Concept and as Visible African Space of Change and Diversity.” In Z. Huang and J. Zhang (eds.) Discussions on Socio-economic Transition: Urbanisation, Industrialization and Cultural Survival in China. Intellectual Property Publishing House, pp. 47-78. [32] I draw the concept from Alexander Betts, Evan Easton-Calabria and Kate Pincock. 2020.“The Localisation of Humanitarian Assistance as a Response to COVID-19.” Available at: https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/localisation-humanitarian-assistance-response-covid-19 . [Accessed: 10 June 2020] [33] BBC Africa. 2019. “Chinese trader gets Nigerian title.” April 29. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2314554302155058 [34] Available at: https://www.nairaland.com/5787867/ask-me-anything-issues-rumor [35] Felix Tih. 2020. “China: 260+ Nigerians evacuated over virus, racism.” May 31. Available at: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/china-260-nigerians-evacuated-over-virus-racism/1859494 [36] China Foreign Ministry. “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian’s Remarks on Guangdong’s Anti-epidemic Measures Concerning African Citizens in China.” April 12. Available at: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/2535_665405/t1768779.shtml [37] “Chinese businessmen murders stir tensions in Zambia.” May 28. The Strait Times. Available at: https://www.straitstimes.com/world/africa/chinese-businessmen-murders-stir-tensions-in-zambia [38] Arundhati Roy. 2020. “The pandemic is a portal”. Financial Times. April 4. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca [39] Ibid. [40] Mathews Gordon, Linessa Dan Lin, Yang Yang. The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. Previous Next

< Back Astrobus Ethiopia 2021 25 May 2021 Astrobus A conversation between Yabebal Fantaye, founder of Astrobus, and Biljana Ciric on the initiative: Astrobus. Astrobus will be conducing its third series of workshops in collaboration with As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future Project and we have decided to get to know them better as well as better understand their modes of working. Just before conducting this interview, Yabebal and a small group of peers went on a research trip to prepare for the upcoming Astrobus series that will be activated in 2021 in Lower Omo Valley in the Southwest of Ethiopia. The field notes of this research trip are also published alongside this conversation, with the workshops themselves to be later shared through journal, in a way of finding ways to learn from local communities. Biljana Ciric: How was Astrobus initiated and how would you situate [the] Astrobus initiative within the local context of Ethiopia? Yabebal Fantaye: The idea of Astrobus came in 2015. It was partly inspired by seeing the inspirational pictures from the 1st edition of the SPACEBUS TOUR 2015 held in Senegal from 1-31 March 2015. In July 2015, a group of Ethiopian Astronomers from all over the world submitted an Expression of Interest with under the project name of Astrobus-Ethiopia for the Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD), which is part of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The Brief summary of the project in the application was: “The AstroBus (ABus) Ethiopia project we plan aims to stimulate astronomy education and a culture of scientific thinking in Ethiopia through the use of exciting astronomy activities. This project is inspired by the success story of the 2015 ‘ SpaceBus ‘ project in Senegal. We believe the idea [of] ‘SpaceBus’ is an effective approach to reach out to the general public in a creative and inspiring way.” As can be seen from the original project description, the project from the onset has [had] the local context as a major [focal] point – building on top of a successful initiative in another African country. The Astrobus-Ethiopia project won IAU OAD funding in Nov 2015. The original 11 team members were all Astronomers, 9 Ethiopians and 2 from South Africa and Norway. The project was planned for Dec 2015, but the situation in Ethiopia meant [that] we couldn’t materialise it [until] Oct 2017. The delay gave us extra time to work on the project details, including time to think about the mission and vision. After extensive online and offline meetings, we decided to go beyond astronomy and include all areas of critical thinking. We defined our mission to be: “Stimulating a culture of critical thinking in Ethiopia.” After securing extra funding from the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the Ethiopian Space Science Society, we established an art and technology sub team on top of the original science and astronomy sub-teams. By collaborating with local non-profit organisations on science, technology, and art, and by partnering with different Universities, we managed to hold the first Astrobus-Ethiopia event in Oct 2017 in the southern part of the country, encompassing cities such as Addis Ababa, Adama, Hawasa, Dilla, Alaba, and Wolaita Sodo. We chose these places as they are major cities and are relatively easy to travel to. Moreover, we also had an established network to [the] Universities in those localities. BC: Why the title ‘Astrobus’? YF: The name Astrobus came because the first proposal was aimed to only encompass astronomy and space activities. Despite the project’s reach expanding a lot since then, we kept the name as it still provides the bigger picture of the project – we still need new scientific ideas, innovative engineering, and artistic design to make a bus that will take us to outer space. BC: Astrobus was started by yourself and a number of collaborators. Could you talk about the structure of the initiative? YF: The idea to have an Astrobus-Ethiopia event in Ethiopia first came because I wrote an email to my Astronomy friends to start writing a project proposal, which was written with significant contribution from every team member. The project is planned and executed by an ad-hoc group that is established at each event. The main work areas that need to be address for a successful Astrobus-Ethiopia event are: 1. Road Management 2. Science Team 3. Art Team 4. Technology Team 5. Media & Communication The first event held in 2017 encompassed cities such as Addis Ababa, Adama, Hawasa, Dilla, Alaba, and Wolaita Sodo. [The] second event took place in 2019, traversing cities such as Fiche, Debre Markos, Bahirdar, Gondar, Axum, Mekelle, and Woldiya. Within the two trips we managed to reach more than 12, 000 students from around 70 schools. Our next trip will be in May 2021 to the cities of Arba Minch, Konso, Jinka, and Sawla. BC: Astrobus always travels to different places. How do you decide when to undertake the next project? YF: [The] ambition of Astrobus-Ethiopia is to reach students from all corners of Ethiopia through its series of events. In the past, the team has travelled to the north and the south of Ethiopia. This year, the team plans to travel to the Lower Omo valley, the south west of Ethiopia, which is known for its extraordinary cultural diversity; approximately 8 ethnic groups; and striking ecosystems including grasslands and pristine forests, and other natural wonders. Omotic-speakers are endemic to the south Omo and include the Ari, Maale, Daasanach, the Hamar-Banna. The region is home to the vast omo park, and the massive Gibe III dam built on the Omo river. BC: What are the challenges that you usually face executing [a] project of this kind (funding, language barriers, local schools – private, public, etc…)? YF: The main challenges we face in organising the Astrobus events are primarily securing enough funding, establishing a functional local organising committee in the localities we travel to, and finding event locations. Moreover, due to the fast-changing nature of the Ethiopian social and political situation, ensuring [the] safety of our team during the trip and having legal permission to securely hold the event is a constant challenge. BC: For the upcoming workshops in May, which will be done in collaboration with [the] As you go… Project, you were able to conduct research trip before undertaking [the] workshops. Can you discuss the difference this had from other trips in the past? YF: Yes – the seed funding for this year’s Astrobus-Ethiopia event is obtained from the As you go… Project, which is also supported by the CURTAIN Project (of Rockbund Art Museum). We also raised some funding from the Ethiopian Space Science Technology Institute and Ethiopian Space Science Society. What makes this year’s event preparation different is that we were able to do a research trip to learn about the cultural context of the areas we travelled to and had the opportunity to connect with local organisers before the event. The information we collected helped us adapt our science, art, and technology activities to suit the social and ecological context of the people we will meet. Another new element is how we formed the art team. This year in collaboration with the bruhartclub , we conducted an open call to artists to propose events. We had a total of 165 applications, from which we selected 10 applicants from Visual Art, Creative Filmmaking, Photography, Street Art, Literature, Poetry, Music, Fashion design, Architecture, Metal Art, Gaming Video Editing, and Graphics Design. Pre-trip SummaryFeb 2021 The Drive On the way to the destination stops, we visited the following areas and our journey tracks below: · Left Addis Ababa at around 7am. We got stuck in traffic, and we were only able to leave Addis around 8pm. · Stopped at Tiya to visit the Tiya Stelles (Tikel Dingay), where we spent 0.5-1hr. · Stopped for breakfast/lunch at Butajira around 11am. Details of the expenses can be found in this google sheet . Objective of the Trip The main goal of the pre-trip was to study the current social and political situations in the four main destinations of Astrobus-Ethiopia 2021: Arba Minch, Dorze, Konso, and Jinka. We wanted to understand the cultural context while paying particular attention to the following: · What do people eat? What type of music do they listen to? How do they dance? · What are their main economical tools? · What are their histories?· Who are their heroes? · What are the parts of their culture they are most proud of? What elements do they want other people to know about? · What are the main concerns of the young people? Economical? Situational? · Who are the people and initiatives that are doing well in the area/region? · Who are the local role models? In addition, the trip had another main objective of setting up local organisers, who help facilitate the event, by reaching out to Schools, Universities, and local administrative bureaus. Finding local organisers, whoever volunteers and lives in the area, is key to the success of the project. They assist in contacting schools and other organizations necessary for coordination of the event. In all places, the majority speak Amharic, so there is no issue in communication. Everywhere in our pre-trial, we used local guides to more intimately understand the history, culture, and values of the people in the localities we visit. All the communities we visited are located within a town, city, or in the suburbs, which means they are easily accessible. The roads to all visited areas are in very good condition, with no need for a special car. The road from Addis to Jinka is asphalt, and of good standard. Two people embarked on research trip in February: Yababel Fataye and Sinkneh Eshetu. Both of the main objectives above were reached. Places and People Tiya (ጢያ) Tiya Stele: 500-600 year old decorated gravestones. There has been very little research on these stones, and the many questions regarding the people who built it remain unanswered. The symbols in the stele include: swords, pillows, enset (a false banana tree whose trunk provides the staple food of the region), and a few others which are not yet well understood. The is an archaeological site in central Ethiopia located in the Garage Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region south of Addis Ababa. It is along the way to Arba Minch with an easily accessible road. Arba Minch Arbaminch (meaning 40 springs), is the water house of the country. It has countless springs that are a clean source of the city’s drinking water and hosts two lakes – the Abbaya & Chammo Lakes – connected by what is named the God Bridge. It has one of the most beautiful forests and grasslands. The nech sar is one of the iconic national parks of Ethiopia. Dorze The Dorze people, a small tribe of around 50,000, who speak the omotic langange: the Dorze language, are famous in Ethiopia for their exceptional weaving skills, delicious food, and particular style of dance and music. They reside in highland villages near the cities of Chencha and Arbaminch. Despite being very small in number, they are all over the country and produce most of the nation’s traditional cotton cloths. Konso Konso Villages. The Konso Village, with its special cultural landscape is a UNESCO world heritage. [1] The villages that date back 21 generations (400 years) are fortified settlements in the Konso highlands of Ethiopia with stone-walled terraces. Generation poles, which represent the village’s 19 year cycle power transition, provide [an] accurate dating of the village. The community open houses provide night shelter for the youth who take turns sleeping there to ensure the security of the village. The Konso people are also known for their excellent farming strategies, one example being their multi-season crop management that allows them to collect two to three yields from a single seeding. The Konso speak the Konso Language, similar to the Oromigna language, which is spoken by the larger Oromo people. Hammer At Hammer, a Bull jumping Ceremonial event. Hammer, the name for the place and its people, are well known for their strong cultural and social cohesion. They are a small population of around 75,000 and speak the Hamer-Banna language. The bull jumping ritual ceremony represents a rite of passage for a man to own properties, form a family, and become a full member of the community. For women, it is the ability to bore a child. Jinka Meeting with an Aari family to learn about their culture. Jinka, a city in the lower Omo valley with a multi-ethnic society. The Aari people are the main tribe in the region, speaking the Aari language which is an Omotic language. The Aari people have one of the cleanest compounds and their houses [are] well kept – an incredible sensitivity to beauty and sanitation. They are known for their blacksmith and pottery skills, and their excellent music wins many hearts in the country, recognised for its exceptional tune and vibe. Ari people A traditional Ari woman painter observing us leaving her compound after she demonstrated the process she uses to make colors to us, and then painted her favourite pattern. Questions: Where do Ari people leave [to]/live? What is [the] social structure? General observations Temperature is hot but not humid until you reach Arba Minch, and so there is largely no need for air conditioning. The road from Wolaita Sodo to Arba Minch is very good. Tiya (ጢያ) castells are a source of historical, archaeological, forensic, pattern reading for the project context. There may be a plan to decode 100 symbols from tiya tikel dengaye (note: ask for the Southern people to name what it represents for them, then analyse data and make an inference). Gamo and Gofa zone. Dorze is in a Gamo zone. The drive from Arba Minch is a pista road on the mountain. Project Ideas With the assumption that we could motivate, inspire, and connect better with our audience if the things we do are relevant to their needs and interests, we brainstormed with the local communities. Some of the points and suggestions forwarded are as follows (Astrobus travellers may consider to link their projects with any of these): Arba Minch Netchsar National Park 1. Counting and classifying the Arba Minch forest trees 2. Counting and classifying the wildlife at Netchsar? Banana and other products 1. Identifying disease in some major crops such as Banana Waste disposal 1. Handling and transforming domestic waste such as plastic bottles Unemployment, Moral Development, and Entrepreneurship 1. Motivating the spirit of moral leadership, entrepreneurship, and innovation Sport 1. Creating physically and mentally healthy generation Music 1. The technologies behind making and enjoying music Food 1. Traditional foods 2. Healthy foods Dorze Architecture 1. Innovations in traditional architecture 2. Bamboo technologies Weaving 1. Technologies in cloth making, such as weaving and dying 2. Fashion design Food 1. Inset Music Pottery Konso Architecture and cultural landscape Human Origin 1. Human origin and distribution (genetics) 2. Cultural exchange 3. A child innovator – who made interesting attempts at inventing Jinka Art – working with the traditional women artists, probably using a different materials Craft – blacksmith Brewery Sawla Not visited The Food ኵርኵፉ: ማሽላ (በቆሎ እኞኪ) ፣ ጐመን ቡላ ፍርፍር: ውሃ እየተርከፈከፈ ዱቄቱ እየታመሰ ፍርፍር ይሆናል ፎሰሴ: አደንጋሬ፣ ጓመን ፣ በቆሎ ቁጢ (ሃይታ ቱኬ) ሻይ: ነጭ ሽንኩርት፣ ድምብላል ፣ ቀይ ሽንኩርት፣ ጭቁኝ ፣ ጨው ሙቿ: ቡላ ፍርፍር ብላንዶ: ቆጮ በበላቄ ባጭራ: ቆጮ በወተት ኤፔላ ቅቤ ፍርፍር Dr Yabebal. Fantaye is an Astrophysicist and a data scientist. [1] “Konso Cultural Landscape,” World Heritage List, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation | World Heritage Convention, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1333/ Previous Next

Educational Program 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO?—WCSCD was initiated in 2018 in Belgrade as an educational platform focused around notions of the curatorial and is a registered civic association. WCSCD’s education program has been run on an annual basis every year since 2018. Till 2022 it was organized as a three-month program for practitioners situated in Belgrade. From 2023 program is organized as biennial working with program participants over longer period of time. Our participants were young practitioners from different parts of the world including the Balkans, EU, Asia, Central Asia, Russia and Latin America making it a unique program in Europe. WCSCD educational program has been learning through recent years to think what kind of citation could actively produce.Through carefully created mentorship program we are committed to think and practice what kind of knowledge we consider worth and how it gets prioritized creating new citations from the margins. [1] [1] Sara Ahmed, “White Men,” Feminist Killjoys Blog, November 4 2014, www.feministkilljoys.com/2014/11/04/white-men < Participants Educational Program Programs >

< Back On Bor’s Industrial Heritage 28 Aug 2020 Dragan Stojmenovic Introduction This year, two interesting research and art projects are being independently realized in Bor – and perhaps with a not so strange coincidence. One is international — “As you go. . . The roads under your feet, towards a new future” [1] , and the other is national — “Eighth Kilometer” [2] . With their topics, intentions and approach, they made me think about the reasons for their interest in Bor. Bor, as one of the most important industrial, mining and metallurgical centers in northeastern Serbia, is a city with an interesting history, alongside a specific natural environment and cultural heritage that is very difficult to summarize in a general article with facts that would show the current state – because this “current state” presents a stage within the perpetual change of all previous socio-historical, natural and cultural facts. Namely, these facts exist only in certain circumstances and contexts of their use, even when it comes to geological and geomorphological characteristics. Not to mention the ideological discourses of socio-economic formations of the different social systems, and the intentions of the politics of representation. Therefore, I could not write the kind of introduction that would simply describe the city of Bor. Instead, I would like to comment as a professional native who comes “from within”. We have yet to come to some relevant facts, though what is being offered to us must not be taken for granted. However, the aforementioned projects refer to, or confirm the fact that, the company for industrial production and processing of copper — Mining and Smelting Combine Bor , which was owned by the state – has now found its way to the New Silk Road , and that it has only been majority-owned by the new Chinese company for a year. The first mentioned international project is partly realized in Bor and will investigate changes within the aesthetics and practice of everyday life in the local environment, which have occurred with the arrival of Chinese investments. The second, is a project by the artists and architects who will represent the Republic of Serbia at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, responding to the question and topic of the International Architecture Exhibition, How will we live together? . It intertwines with the complex and comprehensive presentation of Bor, related to redefining the life-work relationship in the physical layout of the currently existing seven city zones, with a projection of common life in the future at the “Eighth Kilometer” (situated within the new circumstances of the minority strategic partnership with foreign investors from China, with whom we will live and work). As can be seen from the footnotes, the projects were well-timed and designed with flexible methodologies, which have adapted to our current global climate (primarily because they are based on planned ongoing research). In that sense, they are also interested in a more comprehensive understanding of local systems of definitions, classification and division – starting with the most impressive industrial landscapes, sections and developments of the city itself. Therefore, everything evolves from a singular starting point, which could have a zero degree of significance — from the old Bor mine…from the pit… Zero kilometer … fifth side of the world — for those whose level of understanding would require knowing the other seven points…kilometers…chapters. Industrial heritage in the heritage industry “The sublime words of Schiller’s Ode to Joy fell on the gloomy workers’ faces. No, no, no. Sorry. I repeat. They fell on the illuminated… Yes, yes… Illuminated workers’ faces.” [3] „Op mala, op, površinski kop!” (“Oi honey, oi, surface mining!”) [4] The term industrialization implies the use of techniques and technology for a mass, serial production of goods or raw materials; for personal or social economic interests of investors, with the distinct forcing of economic growth and development of organized production; often compared to some previous, technological, technical and “outdated” or “belated” organizational type of production, such as artisanal or manufacturing production. The precondition for performing the play of industrialization is the class privilege of those who possess and know certain techniques and technologies, and through applying them, some automatic authority is gained. In addition to the specialized class of engineers and investors, industrialization is enabled by workers and workers’ culture, with the direct interests of these two groups being realized from completely divergent ideological points of view — private and public, personal and collective. Industrialization brings certain cultural qualifications and processes of a modernization of “others”, and “underdeveloped and backward” areas, known today as “Eastern”, “Southern”, “Southeastern Europe” or “Third World Europe”. Unfortunately, such modernization qualifications and aspirations have long accompanied geographically oriented parts of Serbia that needed to be modernized; “discovered”, “renewed”, “introduced”, “developed”, “reborn”, “improved”. In comparison with their northern and western counterparts, the southern and eastern regions are considered corners of developed areas, or “appendages” of a healthy organism. Such a role was often imposed and lightly accepted, we assume with reasons, which we will look for in socio-political influences, existential impulses and the desire to play and learn. The starting point of the discussed topic is given by the content of the heritage institutions’ funds in Bor [5] and the facts, which in every respect, speak in favor of institutions based on workers’ culture and workers’ organization, logical upgrades and real needs for public institutions – not by the “modernization” and “industrialization” of exclusively privileged classes. We will not consider these initial positions important to show some progressive development of social institutions, but rather, to make an ideological distinction between the social potentials of real needs (necessities) and desires (aspirations). Do public social institutions fulfill the expressed necessary needs, or do they satisfy “desires”? In that sense, we will deal with industrialization and the industry, not only because of their specific material consequences and interests, but primarily because of their cognitive potentials that cause the fixation and recognition of a certain image of a city. That is, a certain, hypothetically derived, dominant attitude; expressed in public discourses surrounding the ideological predominance of the industrial over workers’ culture in Bor during the second decade of the 21st century. As an indicative example of the imposition of a new, distinctly dominant discourse, we will now examine the symbolic gesture of repositioning objects from the Park Museum along the main street in Bor during 2009 [6] , and the prevalence of a new public industrial discourse, at the expense of the discourse of workers’ culture and workers’ organization (which until then, as the dominant ideological formation, was clearly expressed in planned urban solutions and already arranged monuments as symbols of work and workers’ organization in the city center [7] ). We will consider these relocated and rearranged exhibits as a new discursive, syntactic structure that significantly changes the meaning of the exhibits and shows the processes of changing the politics of representation and shifting attitudes around cultural and historical heritage. More precisely, we will try to consider the influence of dominant ideologies on the configuration of the cultural and historical heritage of Bor within public space, alongside the materialization of expressed desires through that newly composed industrial heritage, and taking over the authority of institutions over that cultural heritage. In that sense, the implementation of a new representation policy in a symbolic formation, created by public monuments and redistributed exhibits, enables a new reading, an understanding and an attempt to revise historical facts, as well as expressing some “desires” of the presumed author of the new installation of exhibits and monuments. Firstly, the intention is to expose the “affirmative power” of discourse (Fuko 2007, p. 52) through the representation policy expressed in the mentioned symbolic structure; to use criticism as a “style of learned ease”, as opposed to an expressed genealogical “happy positivism” (Ibid.) (changing the image of the city through a campaign, “For a better Bor” [8] ) in order to understand what we’ve been “told” by the formation in public space. It would be sad if we admitted at the very beginning, that the recently experienced reality showed us the origin of such a materialized exhibition “expression”, so instead, we will further interrogate the topic by explaining and conceptualizing it in the form of a text. In the introduction to his lecture Order of Discourse , 1970, Foucault clearly states his hypothesis, which we will try to understand and apply here: “… in every society, the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its power and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality ” (Foucault 2007, p. 8). We should emphasize the implementation of the process of “taming power and danger” within the already existing historical and ideological discourses of workers’ culture and workers’ organization of the past decade, as important for understanding the current suppression of these discourses. From a broader perspective, in creating a new “image of the city” based exclusively on the campaign strategy of “public relations”, the aim was to construct a new “collective identity”, which marginalizes or completely excludes the materialized ideology of workers’ culture from public space and life. What did the author of the aforementioned installation want to achieve, and what are the origins of their expression, which was subsequently materialized within a public space? Such a “general” image or display will be placed in direct relation to the creation and existence of real images or displays, such as photographs and films, as well as institutional and organized visualizations of Bor — which can lead to the identification of certain “commonplace” or locus communis (local “topoi”). In this case, this works to connect the obvious structural organization of urban areas marked by kilometers [9] (which represents the linear historical and communal development of the city) with the narrativization of the topic we will present. Knowledge on the topic of this paper, in that sense, is not limited exclusively to the effects of constructing positive or negative attitudes/images. It is also largely based on responsibility, and the experience and interpretation of the facts surrounding the disinterested and aimless wandering (for the sake of upholding a preventive way of maintaining the health of critical consciousness), in order to “discover the author or authors” of this kind of “optical hygiene”. The very topic of industrial heritage in the heritage industry was chosen to most effectively describe the current state of industrial heritage in Bor from the position of a “native ethnologist” [10] – perhaps more precisely: “professional native” – to explain one of its many possible perceptions. Such freedom of interpretation, of course, does not imply arbitrariness in approach, but obliges to the responsibility of understanding and interpreting real positions and facts, to produce a meaningful “self-critical” structure. It would be necessary, for example, with modern librarianship (due to the existence of an important institution, or the principle of desideratum in acquisition policy, i.e. planned and strategic replenishment of funds with missing materials or rare disciplinary approaches to certain topics). The topic is approached from a critical position precisely because the funds are systematically filled with historical material, while the prevailing expectations are directed exclusively towards the uncritical reproduction of historiographical and contemporary social facts by “innovative technologies”. From the professional obligations of the librarians of the Local History Department of the Public Library of Bor came the motivation to explore this topic; to understand, and to present a part of the industrial heritage preserved in the Library. This motivation not only emerged from the professional obligations of a local history librarian, but also from a collaboration with prof. Slobodan Naumović, (which takes place in several related and intertwined thematic areas through many years of his field work in Bor), on the analytical processing of photo documentation from the point of view of visual anthropology. This has inspired and encouraged multiple approaches, potentials and perspectives for new interpretations, focusing on the cultural-historical, labor and industrial heritage preserved in the mentioned institution. This “key resource” (Naumović, 2013, p. 75–111) with numerous implications in contemporary everyday life, reflected on contemporary creativity and discovering the approach to photography as a continuous practice of visual recording in Bor; pointing out the need to understand and reveal intentions, methodologies and messages that the authors convey with their visual projections. By introducing collaborative (shared) anthropology [11] into the process of interpreting photography – an integrated methodological approach to interpreting “inside” and “outside”, “mirrors” and “windows” – a necessary balance is established, and an essential connection between differing, subjective, and social views, evaluations and meanings is achieved. (See more in: Naumović, Radivojević, 2015). It is precisely the connections between “ life and work ”, “ collective and individual memory ”, “ different types of applied photography and industrial heritage ”, “ institutional and non-institutional visual recording ” that inspired the search for balance between industrial heritage and workers’ culture (Ibid., pp. 126-182). In the joint intention with prof. Naumović, during the elaboration of the topic Visualization of working culture and industrial heritage in Bor , the foundations of the view “from within” were to be established, in order to balance the relations between our current contemporary position of interpretation, and use of visual material. Thus, this text should articulate, set, and describe the reflective state, conditions, and perspectives of the interpretation of industrial heritage and workers’ culture in the “mirror” of modern local society and culture. On the other hand, the impetus came from the domains of librarianship and museology (museum studies), heritology (derived from a critique of museum studies and the need to create a science of heritage skills, and learning about memory skills) and thinking about strategies for selecting and representing cultural goods for the purpose of redefining identity elaborated by prof. Dragan Bulatović. (Bulatović, 2004, 2013, 2015a, 2015b.) The topological narrative of this paper, and the text that accompanies the division of Bor into kilometers, is incorporated into the well-known linear origin of the beginning and end, with minimal historicization to obscure, retain, and evoke “self-understanding” (not to mention environmental pollution) of authentic local expression and condition, that is interlaced into a kind of constitutive mythology. In that sense, it will be important to maintain a balance between the description of the condition and the process, accounting for the frequent slips and sudden braking caused by clumsy driving of a “heavy truck in reverse” – or by dancing “kolo” (circle dance) on the serpentine paths of Bor mines – so that we can “safely” park or dance with the topic. The blue cinemascope in the movie Op, mala, op! Centar za neformalnu komunikaciju – Nemušto, Bor, 2001. The First Kilometer The processes of the industrialization of Bor could be characterized as modernization during the administration of the French Society of the Bor Mines (the Concession St. George) from 1903 to 1941. It was then the intensive exploitation of ore began: metallurgical plants were built, and with a sudden influx of workers, a mining colony was subsequently formed. It is important to note that following only the interests of production, there was only the controlled development of the town and communal structures deemed necessary, in order to maintain the administrative status of the mining colony. “The French built what they had to in the settlement, but they resisted that Bor gains the status of a city, because then they would be obliged to build a lot more (primarily underground sewerage)…” (Jovanović, 1987–1990, p. 196). Until the liberation, and shortly after the Second World War, Bor was known exclusively as Bor mines. Although Bor gained the status of being a city in 1947, but the old name had already been in use for some time. However, it wasn’t until the next cycle of modernization (during the period of the First and Second phases of reconstruction [12] ), in a completely different socio-political system of self-managing socialism, that a new society was established – new metallurgical plants were built, new mines were opened and the city was urbanized. The recent process of industrialization and attempts at modernization can be characterized as a process of “retraditionalization”: the discovery of industrial heritage and local history from completely different political and ideological positions of liberal capitalism, in the period of transition and “reconstruction” during the second decade of the twenty-first century. Therefore, we focus on the trend toward deriving certain cultural characteristics of the dominant economic activities (mining and metallurgy) from certain natural determinations, i.e natural resources (forests, rivers, ores), in order to show historical depth, continuity, permanence or a certain “tradition” (see more in: Romelić, 2017). At the same time, we emphasize their constitutive potential related to modern understandings and uses of the terms “industrial heritage” and “workers’ culture”. Keeping this in mind, we will pay attention to the essential connections between this industrial heritage and workers’ culture, but also to the emphasis on the differences between them, or their tendentious division into two isolated categories. Their essential connection is in the fact that cultural heritage exists as a reality in the balanced interdependence of its tangible and intangible components, not in the selective interpretation of individual contributions. Therefore, we use this connection with a deliberate ideological implication — a “thread”: with industrial heritage as a material, and labor culture and organization as an intangible component of a unique cultural and historical heritage. It is a “thread” that is untied from either the “left” or “right” side. Considering the current situation of the predominance of material industrial heritage over workers’ culture, we can follow from which side, figuratively, the thread is untied – on workers’ boots or off the “fast” and comfortable sneakers of liberal industrial capitalism The thread is, of course, strongly tied on both sides, regardless of the footwear in question. However, according to the social position and responsibility towards cultural and historical heritage, preparation for work itself, (when it comes to work, we count on ambiguity associating the word “work” with the text you are reading) has shown that the most harmful thing for the local community is untying and taking off (visually unrepresentative) worn-out workers’ shoes. The real presence and potentials of industrial heritage and working culture in Bor therefore has a dark side; embodied in demagoguery, populist rhetoric, and the instrumentalization of cultural and historical heritage over the past decade. This resulted in the realization of the greatest fears of workers and citizens: the privatization of the company and granting concessions for the exploitation of natural resources. Privatization of important objects of cultural and historical heritage (e.g. an old building in which Head offices of the successive corporations were situated, or a memorial complex dedicated to the victims of the forced labour in Bor during WWII, which is in the vicinity of the new pit) happened at the same time. On this occasion, we aim to challenge, describe and analyze these different positions of the relationship between property and ownership of cultural goods within the “heritage industry”. The phrase “heritage industry” (Bulatović, 2015, p. 137) is transferred from the museological theory of prof. Dragan Bulatović, who mentions it in the “context of individualization of cultural property” for the development of, for example, cultural tourism, whose priority is to emphasize economic interest, and the main feature: serial production, based on models in the field of management within liberal economics and culture, aimed at construction of “desirable images” (Bulatović, 2013, p. 12) or a positive reputation. An adequate example of this selective conceptualization and instrumentalization of industrial heritage happened during the campaign of the company RTB Bor “For a better Bor”. In our case, to achieve this “desirable image” of the company and the city, we resorted to already defined and cultivated cultural goods and museum artifacts from the Technical Collection of the Museum of Mining and Metallurgy in Bor, as well as deliberately neglecting to show real and constructive contributions of workers’ culture and workers’ organization. However, at that very moment, when the company’s new public relations strategy indicated the need to produce a “positive reputation” of the company and the city, it reached for the “desired” component of the instant market economy — the already organized, systematically raised, and collected cultural and historical heritage in the Park Museum [13] . Why exactly that? Perhaps because in showing some “genealogy” or continuity of industrial activity, its “historical depth” revealed the enablement of a modernist, linear view of the “progress” of industry (as well as of the industry itself), emphasizing its constitutive contributions, (though while doing so, deliberately neglecting the contribution of workers’ culture and organization)? Because of the forced and unauthorized appropriation of industrial heritage, the imposition of only one option in the “managerial strategy” of the city’s representation (the marginalization and ignoring of the professional activities of local heritage institutions)? Museums, libraries and archives carry out their activities based on the belief that cultural goods, under the protection of heritage institutions (the “owners” who use and manage them), are inalienable. That is, according to Article 14 of the valid Law on Cultural Property, they can be “alienated” under the conditions previously determined by the Law, but the “right of ownership” cannot be acquired over them (Law, 1994, Article 14). In the case we will consider, there was an unauthorized alienation of cultural goods that had had a great impact on the development of society, culture, technology and science, which consequently were under the protection of the Museum (Ibid. Article 5). The alienated objects were rearranged and dislocated from the Park Museum to the main street in Bor with the intention of “telling the story of the development of Bor”. Given the obligation of a comprehensive approach to the topic of industrial heritage, choice of methodology, and manner of presentation, it would be necessary to pay attention to this process of unauthorized “industrialization” – this instrumentalization of heritage outside of heritage institutions, to consider the ways in which the heritage has been incorporated into market relations, and how a “positive reputation” of the city/company and their “branding” have been created. In that sense, the “heritage industry” was used to describe in detail the current state of manipulation of cultural and historical heritage, in order to construct an alternative public discourse on the more important characteristics of the city, and the possible influences on creating a new, more positive “city reputation” in 2009-2019. The use of tradition and retraditionalization are processes characteristic of societies in transition. “Having found suitable ground for a society with disrupted, but not completely stopped currents of modernization, for such a society that perceived its situation as a crisis in key areas of activity, such as economy, international relations, ideology or culture, the practice of using tradition as a means of adapting to consequences, and overcoming the causes of the crisis, has spread from the domain of politics to almost all areas of social life in Serbia” (Naumović, 2009, p. 10). On the other hand, in such a situation of presenting the public use of “alienated heritage”, we must resort to a certain cynicism in interpreting the problem. Primarily because in such a situation we must not allow cultural goods, although alienated, to be considered “property” (with exclusive rights to personal vision and their interpretation), whatever newly composed construction they should present in these emerging contexts. prof. Dragan Bulatović problematizes the processes of “branding museum heritage”, showing completely opposing positions of cultural goods within institutions (in charge of their upbringing and preservation) relating to market relations and market logic, which are increasingly applied in those institutions. Representative exhibition activities of cultural institutions are spectacularized thanks to marketing that offers “unique opportunities” for viewing — viewing and access to funds – but: “offered is not available (museum vaults are inalienable, unique, unrepeatable, and sometimes, unfortunately, untouchable)” (Bulatović, 2004. p. 146). “The usual metaphoricality of the slogan should grow into a condensation by which the subject expresses the repressed meaning of his desire (Lacan), and the chosen symbols would have to be replaced by a metonymic movement denoting what desire is – the desire for something else that is always missing.” (Ibid., P. 146). We therefore live the consequences of fulfilled desires (not the needs of social institutions) which we have expressed in recent history. Fulfilled by an unfounded, materialized, symbolic arrangement of cultural goods in public space (which should have a real “historical depth” and wider social significance) in fact, represents an unlit tunnel through a hill of accumulated problems, dug with a concrete intention and hope that in the end, we will be liked by the foreign investors who will allow us to be “reborn” from our womb. What kind of tradition and industrial heritage do we have if our heritage is a constant confiscation and appropriation of cultural and historical values, make-up, and temporariness, while we hold onto the hope that the rich inheritance will eventually be excavated for us? What happens in the end, when cultural goods are used as the “secondary raw material” of daily politics? We must remember that a period of just over a century is still young. Incredibly alive. Usable and dynamic. So paradoxical and brilliant, that it was possible for the miner, Paun Meždinović, who had discovered the ore in 1903 as a working boy, and retired in the 1950s to work as a security guard at the Museum in Bor [14] . Why are we “ashamed” of workers, workers’ culture and workers’ organization today? What led us to have the industrial heritage of machines and technical means collected for the needs of the Park Museum, only to be appropriated and instrumentalized for the purpose of selling what we thought we would inherit — what built us? Such dynamics of uncertainty, impotence of profession, negligence and misunderstanding of the founders of public institutions towards the public good, and active privatization of social property, can be important reasons why Bor is omitted from the review, analysis and strategy of presenting historically relevant potentials of specific (tangible and intangible) cultural heritage encompassed by this recently identified industrial heritage. We can continue to look for these reasons. But first, we must oppose the diminution of the authority local heritage institutions hold over public cultural and historical heritage spaces, as well abolish the ingrained prejudice that dictates places of heavy industry “have no history or tradition” – that they are young, artificially and forcibly created only for the temporary satisfaction of our basic needs (proverbial “to seek one’s fortune”). Living and working in the same place – a segment of culture related to the production, exploitation and the routine of everyday life, burdened by the noise of machines, and the smell of polluted air and land – contradicts the intended outcome of “market logic”. Of rational calculations of civilizational achievements, and an agreeable representational image. By that logic, this image should not seem threatening to foreign investors or tourists. The picture of everyday life in Bor consists mainly of fatigue, mechanically organized routine, hard labor, sickness, and vague and divided emotions, all laid out upon landscapes with serpentines on tailings, reminding us that we are only here temporarily, to earn and survive. This contrasts heavily with the “positive” and “beautiful” characteristics that would benefit the desired image of progress. Local authenticity is lost when the social needs met by public institutions become somebody else’s instrumentalized desires. The intentions of these desires are to be what we are not – or, if we adopt them, to portray us, just as we are. The processes of adopting desires can be silent and gradual, until eventually agreed upon; while the presentation or manifestation of intentions that fit into a certain social praxis, can be considered a “play”. The play itself can absorb and include us to be a part of it – but it also maintains a certain distance, so that the understanding of our spatial position relating to that play is framed by ourunderstanding of the relationship between positions of representation and real conditions; between adopted joint representation and the fulfillment of functions of compensating (or compensation) for certain expectations, shortcomings and needs. The director of such a play may or may not plan the audience’s participation, but he certainly counts on its passive observation. Therefore, a critical consideration of social needs is a corrective in the realization of the activities of public institutions, which, in part, regulate the realization of the expressed desires of individuals. Meanwhile, important facts are being hidden and forgotten. Something was left somewhere to be here. Something important was taken to be as it is now. We suppress and forget something important. Something constantly reminds us that things should really be better than they are – not just look better or prettier. Why must an “aesthetic” criteria be allowed to impose the polarization of citizens: if we are not “for a more beautiful Bor”, we are automatically destined for that “less beautiful Bor”? Additionally, a primary organic attachment – closeness to the landscape and homeland – has been silenced and suppressed. It is “self-evident” and quite obviously present, based on the very choice to be here, even if we have just left from an outdated train at railway platform. We are here, after all. Everyone around us came from somewhere. We are all “foreigners” — natives of “non-places” [15] . “This need to find meaning in the present, and perhaps in the past, is the price we pay for the abundance of events in what we might call the ‘super modern’, to express its essential quality: excess” (Ože M. 2005, pp. 31–32). Augé determines the state of supermodernity through “the figures of excess”. One of them concerns time — exaggeration in the sense of the abundance of time (Ibid., P. 32). Paradoxically, we find this “excess of time” in the already mentioned visualized assembly procedure: in the installation of redistributed industrial machines and public monuments along the main street, which vacuums the history of Bor and explodes in our contemporaneity and everyday life. More precisely, the abundance of “unauthorized alienated”, rearranged objects of the Park-Museum show us the desired state whose intentions we “do not read”. The second, important exaggeration that Augé points out, is spatial. Related to the accelerated crossing of distances and the transmission of images, only one image “possesses a power far in excess of any objective information it carries” (Ibid., P. 32). Meanwhile, Augé warns us of the “false familiarity” that images on screens, or in public spaces, can create. (Which, frankly and outside of the topic of this essay, everyone is currently relying on, to some degree). “The spatial overabundance” is expressed in the abundance of “images and imaginary references, and in the spectacular acceleration of transport (Ibid., P. 36). Such an abundance of images and traffic, we assume, may be a consequence of certain aspects of industrialization (such as the concentration of population in cities and increased population movement), with which Augé introduces us to the “non-places”: “The installations needed for the accelerated circulation of passengers and goods (high-speed roads and railways, interchanges, airports) are just as much non-places as the means of transport themselves, or the great commercial centers, or the extended transit camps where the planet’s refugees are parked.” (Ibid., P. 36). The aforementioned “liberating” phrase — natives of “non-place” — should allow the author and the reader to understand what is read, lived, interpreted, present, here and now in the text, or in the subject itself. It partly “liberates” the author as a “typewriter”, confirms and justifies his position, but paradoxically, also enables the recognition of the production of “commonplaces” (in the text or subject of study) striving to show the authenticity of a given culture and community. In that context, we do not forget that sociologist, Cvetko Kostić, pointed out in 1962 the existence of functional urban zones — “residential aggregates” within several categories of social aggregates – as “a characteristic of a modern city and city life” in relation to Bor. Besides residential aggregates, social aggregates also include crowds, masses, and audiences (Kostić, C. 1962, pp. 97–100), which points to similar characteristics with Augé’s “non-places”. Perhaps this kind of liberating cynicism of being a natives of “non-place”, based on the continuity of “residential aggregates” of workers / citizens, could offer us an adequate critical apparatus to be present in the text or subject, as we would be in our room or workplace. Based on institutional legal regulations and the “reflexive” approach to cultural heritage demonstrated in the texts of prof. Dragan Bulatović [16] (the mentioned balanced, discursive and comprehensive approach to industrial heritage); and the work of prof. Slobodan Naumović, inspired by anthropological and museological theories; as well as library theory and practice, we will use the local spectacularization of the “industrial heritage” in the era of “tourism and the renaissance”, as a contrast when scanning the current situation before setting out to “unwind the film” away from our contemporaneity. Industrial heritage as a “key resource” is still not recognized as a special segment of cultural heritage within the current Law on Cultural Heritage (Law, 1994), but it is a constitutive element and has been the basis of all heritage institutions in Bor since their founding. “One of the current definitions is offered in the so-called Nizhny Tagil Charter for the Industrial Heritage. The charter was adopted in Moscow in 2003 by the Assembly of Representatives of the International Committee for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage (TICCIH). According to that charter, industrial heritage can be considered objects and structures built for industrial activities, processes, and means used within them, as well as the cities and landscapes where they are located, together with their tangible and intangible phenomena, of fundamental importance” (Naumović, 2013, p. 76). As an example, technical heritage and objects of technical culture, that are kept in museums and universities, are most closely related to objects and the concept of industrial heritage. Due to the advancement of technology and techniques, more and more instruments, equipment and tools are being overtaken by newer, more efficient, higher quality, faster and more precise means; thus there is a need to preserve old technical objects that are no longer in use. The real fear of the transience and obsolescence of technical objects is equally valid for industrial heritage. Consider: cities and the geographical formations of landscapes and panoramas (as a broader term of industrial heritage which can move beyond a laboratory or factory and into ambient units) and the depths of their impact on people’s lives and their existence. Unlike the idea behind technical heritage, the industrial heritage, in addition to “transience”, implies additional fears related to the alienation of workers from the means of labor, the sale of resources, and the privatization of social property. Reflexive attitudes towards labor, means, and products and production, is the most important because it allows for the recognition of their social values. Such a reflective relationship can also be the basis for understanding workers’ culture and organization as an intangible form of industrial heritage. “Industrial heritage as a concept, and as a field of professional activity, arose when a number of emotionally interested people became faced with the rapid destruction of everything that would later be united by that concept; which was then understood as a set of ugly, naturally scattered waste, or as a remnant of old times that hinders the development of new forms of business, a new industrial cycle” (Naumović, 2013, p. 77). “Heritage exists only when it acquires the status of property in the consciousness of an individual. […] only good knowledge of one’s own property…an awareness of the values we ascribe to the material world, can help plan production activities. Then, a wealth of memory becomes crucial in strategic investment. The latter implies that any individualization of cultural property transpires in order to achieve progress within the life of the community, which [subsequently] forms economic patterns [from] the good sense of memory and inheritance of each other’s own cultural property” (Bulatović, 2015a, p.137). However, Bulatović further points out and warns that “culture is a matter of continuous construction and should not be inherited, as opposed to material remnants of the past that are necessarily part of the hereditary suitcase” (Ibid.), that by inheritance law is possible to have a titular “without culture”, without “sense of heritage”. We will remind you again of the valid Law on Cultural Property, according to which cultural goods are those whose laws and regulations prescribe the value which should be preserved for the public good, and that they are owned by the state, and the institutions who own cultural goods manage, preserve, and make them available under certain conditions. In our case, there is such a titular, or so-called local sheriff, who gives himself the right to participate in the management of cultural goods; placing himself above institutions, above the law, and above a powerless, decent culture “with a bun”, who ultimately has no strength to oppose the newly composed raw, political power. Of course, we can assume the outcomes of the interests of such a titular. Unfortunately, and due to institutional inertia, everything occurs with the newly composed verses “ne može nam niko ništa, jači smo od sudbine” [17] and representation policy of a dominant group of manipulators, so that only the darkest premonitions come true (and always in their favor), leaving us to think about what we have left and what is melted down, lost and sold out. “If it is clear that the civic museum offers a way of understanding time and its stock market value — the surplus value of the time of a capitalist economy – and it is clear that it is vulnerable to the inside, only if the reality whose image it generates changes radically. Any intention to situate the idea of intertwining the conception of reality within his own conception, comes as a side of the order of values which he follows” (Bulatović, 2015, p. 58). We must note that Professor Bulatovic considers “heritage industry” from the standpoint of cultural tourism in the context of the individual and family initiatives who see only the economic side of the economy. “Usually, small initiatives are taken as models of solutions in economically hopeless areas, and in that sense, they act as necessary – often the only – bridges in the current situation” (Bulatović, 2015, p. 157). It could be said that economically “hopeless situations” can befall industrial giants, and so a similar strategy of “bridging” (in fear of deindustrialization) was applied in Bor – only that the real fear of privatization was overcome, in part, thanks to a touristic “heritage industry”. Simultaneously, we could notice that cultural goods, in accordance with the transitional practices of the gray market, are “creatively” viewed as a “secondary raw material” suitable for recycling. This conceptual approach can be recognized, not only in every attempt at non-institutional instrumentalization, historical revision, revitalization, or reconfiguration of heritage, but also the occasional falter of heritage institutions on the waves of their modernization, renewal, and uncritical adoption of innovative technologies imposed by cultural industry agendas. Industrial heritage and the heritage industry, with their arsenal of control machines, are aimed at neglecting the workers’ culture, passivation of workers, and the workers’ organization, in order to achieve their final goal without resistance —privatization. Hence, the urgent need for a polemical view of the current situation, with the use of “contrast when scanning” our current situation, and these issues. — to be continued Photographer: Markovic N. Mihailo 1920 Bor Photo documentation French Society of the Bor Mines. Collection of Ljuba Markov. 18 x 24 cm COBISS.SR-ID512424632. 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In Principles of visual anthropology, edited by Paul Hockings. Berlin ; Mouton de Gruyter. Click to read Serbian version Dragan Stojmenović is local history librarian in Public Library Bor. [1] http://old.wcscd.com/index.php/2020/01/07/as-you-go-the-roads-under-your-feet-towards-a-new-future/ [2] https://www.gradnja.rs/bijenale-2020-osmi-kilometar-anketni-konkurs-iva-bekic/ [3] One of the leaders at the beginning of the film “Man Is Not a Bird”, by Dušan Makavejev, dictates to journalists the report from the concert of the 4th movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which the choir and symphony orchestra performed in the company’s metallurgical plants on the occasion of the smelter. [4] The author of the refrain and the title of the Bor “folk” song is Srba Stančić, first recited within a circle of friends in 2000. It was first filmed and performed publicly in the amateur film Op, mala op! by the Center for Informal Communication Nemušto (2001). The song was then developed, sung and arranged by the local band Duo trojica (2006) for the film Mining Opera (2006) by Oleg Novković and Milena Marković. The authors of the composition and the text under that title are Miroslav Mitrašinović and Saša D. Lović. [5] This is due to the fact that the institutions for the preservation of cultural and historical Heritage in Bor– the Department of Historical Archives of Negotin; the Museum of Mining and Metallurgy; and the Public Library Bor–have their funds mainly based on local economic, geographical, and culturally historical specificities related to workers’ culture, workers’ movements and the industrial heritage since their establishment. As for the Public Library Bor, within its fund organization and systematization is its Local History Department, which collects, processes, preserves and makes available library material created in Bor, and whose authors were working or living in Bor; or which is thematically related to Bor and its surroundings, regardless of the place of origin,. The Library and the Archive collect, process, preserve and make use of this movable cultural heritage, while the Museum, in addition to the movable heritage, also takes care of the immovable cultural heritage. See more about the funds: http://www.arhivnegotin.org.rs/news/item/34 ; http://digitalnizavicaj.org.rs ; http://www.muzejrudarstvaimetalurgije.org [6] A systematized and illustrated overview of the working-mining culture in Bor and its current state is available in the publication of Živka Romelić The Mining Culture in Bor: tradition as a stimulus, Bor 2017. http://digitalnizavicaj.org.rs/index.php?query=ispisTextaIzKolekcije&idTexta=413#ad-image-0 [7] Later in the text, the old and new locations of individual monuments and exhibits will be described in more detail, but for this note we will single out the relocations of Miner with a Drill, and the monument to trade unionist, Petar Radovanović, as the main symbols which have been moved from their original locations to the beginning or end of the new outdoor setting along the main streets in Bor. This will be discussed in more detail in the text. Both sculptures are currently on the newly built roundabouts: Miner with a Drill was placed on the Fourth Kilometer, while the monument to Petar Radovnović was placed on the conditionally said First Kilometer. Photos from the ceremonial rally on the occasion of the unveiling of the monument to Petar Radovanović on August 6, 1981 can be seen on the following link: http://digitalnizavicaj.org.rs/index.php?query=ispisTextaIzKolekcije&idTexta=431#ad-image-0 A photograph of the monument Miner with a drill or Bor miner, photographed at the original location in 1960 can be seen at the following link that is part of the catalog description: https://plus.sr.cobiss.net/opac7/bib/512720056#full [8] The initiator of the campaign for social responsibility “For a better Bor” is RTB-Bor. See example on the link: https://kolektiv.co.rs/novi-rudarski-eksponat-u-park-muzeju/ [9] The division of the city into kilometers from the old surface mine (grope, hole, gaura or the commonly understood, zero kilometer) was probably conditioned by the first urban solutions that foresaw the further development of the city from the north to the south. The expansion of the colony began with the construction of the “New” or Southern Colony in 1928. At the end of the mid-20th century, Bor further developed urbanistically, generating the Second and Third kilometers, and by 1965, the Program of urban-technical conditions, for a detailed solution of the settlement on the III and IV kilometers in the city of Bor, formalized the framework zoning of the city. This division of the city is widely accepted in the informal communication of Bor’s natives, which, with the formation of the city cemetery at the 7th kilometer, produced a linear understanding of the development and life of the city and its citizens. There were several signs of this informal zoning, one of which is on the fountain at the Second kilometer, which was marked after its construction in 2002. This linear concept was used in the amateur film Op, mala op, Surface Mine!, 2001; 0 KM, 2012: an exhibition of photographs by Hervé Dez, Marija Janković and Vladimir Radivojević; and most recently, Eighth kilometer: Survey competition, 2020/21, that will represent Serbia at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2021, led by Iva Bekić. See more about the exhibition Zero kilometer: http://digitalnizavicaj.org.rs/index.php?query=ispisTextaIzKolekcije&idTexta=260#ad-image-15 http://digitalnizavicaj.org.rs/index.php?query=kolekcijaTekstova&idKolekcije=30 More about the Eighth kilometer project: https://www.gradnja.rs/bijenale-2020-osmi-kilometar-anketni-konkurs-iva-bekic/ [10] A native ethnologist (ethnographer or anthropologist) is brought up in the culture or environment that they study and to which they belong. (See more in: Milenković, M. 2003, pp. 255 – 259) [11] Also referred to as reflexive anthropology from Jean Rouch. The concept of collaborative (shared) anthropology in this context arose from a kind of “digressive search”, which is not programmed (with previously established goals) or opportunistic (unexpected or coinciding with events without adequate understanding), but complementary, to fill segments that contribute to modern understanding of photographing and presenting a certain environment. (On digressive search, see more in: Sorenson and Jablonko 2014, 71–80). It was used to emphasize the importance of researchers’ cooperation with the community they study and community members’ participation in the realization and presentation of research results. [12] The First and Second phases of the construction and reconstruction of the mine were preceded by two five-year plans from 1947-57, when the program of the first phase was adopted and launched, within which new equipment for pit and surface ore exploitation was procured. The transport of mineral raw materials was modernized. A new ore warehouse was built to meet the capacity of the mine to expand to the one in Majdanpek (which started operating in 1961): equipped with five fry furnaces, a new flame furnace and three large converters. A dam was also built to create a new artificial accumulation of industrial water – Lake Bor. A new sulfuric acid factory was also built, simultaneously with the super phosphate factory in Prahovo. The first phase was completed in 1961. The second phase began in 1966, immediately after the economic reform of 1965, which expanded the production capacities of sulfuric acid and precious metals in Bor and Majdanpek. The Bor-Majdanpek railway was built, alongside a new ore transport system, a new electrolysis, a foundry of precious metals, a new smelter, and two more sulfuric acid factories. The second phase of construction and reconstruction lasted until 1971. (See more: Erić, 1975, 113–130) [13] Opening of the Park Museum in 1997 in Bor (settings of the Technical Collection of the Museum of Mining and Metallurgy in Bor) Author of photos: Ljubomir Markov. See more on the following link: http://www.digitalnizavicaj.org.rs/index.php?query=ispisTextaIzKolekcije&idTexta=428#ad-image-0 [14] On the occasion of marking the fiftieth anniversary of the mine, a celebration was organized at which the first miners were solemnly sent to a well-deserved retirement. Plaques and letters of thanks were awarded to deserving miners, including Paun Meždinović. See more on the following link: https://plus.sr.cobiss.net/opac7/bib/512722872 [15] The phrase was created by merging the concept of the notion of the non-place of Marc Augé and the feelings of the author of the text, brought up towards important characters from the films of Wim Wenders. The inspiration for this “liberating” phrase can be found in Marc Augé’s anthropological essay The Near and the Elsewhere. [16] “Preservation has two faces: material (treasury) and reflexive (thesaurus). The distinction is actually drawn by the so-called boundaries of memory – representative (monuments) carriers of documentaries (sources of truth) – and they are embodied in national, state apparatus-protected, cultural vaults. The reflective face has the role of a window into the vault. Through which, every bearer of new life stares into or, to concretize, every material and spiritual activity that arises because of forgetfulness, works in favor of the adoption of a common linguistic and, consequently, lexical fund – thesaurus forgets to permanently preserve the cultural values of the past. ” (Bulatović, 2015, p. 48) [17] Part of the refrain of a newly composed song performed by folk singer Mitar Mirić. Translation: “no one can do anything to us, we are stronger than fate.” Previous Next